With a sinking feeling at his heart and a muttered: “Now!” the pilot once more turned the nose of his machine downward.
The dreaded plunge was made.
In a second’s time he had left the gold and purple of the upper world and was immersed in the storm-clouds. As though dipped in an icy bath, he felt cold chills running through him and running through him again. Flash after flash of lightning, blinding in its bluish glare, momentarily tore asunder the darkness, and he had instantaneous glimpses of phantom-like masses of vapor and portions of the moisture-laden machine gleaming with a sharp, metallic light.
Electricity seemed to be forming all about him. He could not rid himself of a terrible fear that the machine might get into the path of one of those zigzag streaks of flame chasing each other in every direction. The thunder was cracking like pistol shots multiplied a thousand fold. It came, too, in wild, gurgling notes, or in mighty, deafening detonations that dazed and bewildered the pilot.
In the anguish of his soul, he cried out, not once but many times:
“I am lost! I am lost!”
And so it really seemed; for the bravely-battling plane, almost shaken to pieces by the onrushing wind, was driven first one way and then another, or beaten back, threatening at every instant to topple over on its back and complete the rest of its journey in an uncontrollable spinning dive.
Don Hale was fairly gasping for breath. Every bone in his body ached. His brain was dizzy and reeling. But that powerful instinct of self-preservation implanted in every one prevented him from giving up in utter despair, though he fully expected that the airy caverns of the clouds would be the last thing his eyes were ever destined to look upon.
With teeth gritted together, he fought on, matching his wits and brains with the seething, shrieking vortex that toyed with the plane and seemed bent upon his destruction. And each hard-won victory brought a little more hope to his heart and lessened the strain on his overwrought nerves. Yet it all appeared unreal, unnatural and unearthly—like a chaos—nature itself in the grip of anarchy.
But how thick were the clouds? He could not understand why he should be so long immersed in their humid depths.