The safest course, Garry thought, was to go on climbing. Don, without being able to exchange ideas, felt the same way.
As the gusty wind got under the wings he operated his controls to right the ship; when the tail lifted, he compensated with the elevators, always climbing when he dared. Rain swept in stinging sheets across the wings and into their faces, cold and stinging, making the wings heavy, but Don gained slowly but surely in his fight for altitude.
Finally they emerged from the clouds, and soon were able to rise beyond the worst of the turbulent air.
“I’ll go higher,” Don determined. “I want to be safe from the upsweep of warm currents; they upset the ship too much.”
As he gained altitude, going close to the “service ceiling” or safest and highest altitude at which engine power was not dragged down too much by the lightness of air, Don saw, with dismay, that a worse complication confronted him.
The storms they had overcome were not the only ones existing.
After the humid, torrid day, storms were visible to the North, to the East and to the West, as far as his eyes could probe the lower strata of air.
Theirs would be a poor chance if he flew toward the South: although only the beginnings of turmoil lay in that direction, the sea was waiting, and Don’s only choice seemed to be to stay aloft as long as he could, hoping for a lull between the periods of stress, through which he could drop to a lower point, get his location and perhaps make a landing.
With unexpected fury an eddying uprush of air took the Dragonfly in its fierce grip, twisting and turning it, flinging the right wing high.
Swiftly, and with more than his usual force, Don threw the stick to a position that should correct and right the ship.