Johnny was puzzled and not a little worried. The chummy roadster, equipped with connecting-rods of the new steel, which had carried them seven thousand miles without a mishap, lunged first to one side of the road, then to the other. It leaped forward to bury itself in a cloud of dust that lay deep as mud on the desert trail. To the right and left of them and before them, far as eye could see, was sagebrush. The air was permeated with the odor of it.
They were two hundred miles from anywhere, in the heart of the Great American Desert, and behind them, like a streak of fire, a long, low red car was bearing down upon them. It was this car that puzzled and worried him.
“Can’t give her more gas, can you?” Pant asked hoarsely. “They’re gaining fast.”
Pushing the dusty goggles up from the ridge of his nose, Johnny stared ahead. There never was another such trail. In a land where rain never falls the roads rut, and the ruts fill with dust. Cars sink in to the axles, and skidding, shoot to the other side, to fall into a deeper rut.
“To go faster is suicide,” Johnny groaned. “Guess it’ll have to be a fight!”
“Mighty uneven one, too, probably,” Pant muttered. “Don’t stop till I tell you to; I’m getting into the back seat to have a look at them.”
Gripping the seat he made his way, tossed first this way, then that, to the back of the car. There he remained with eyes fixed on the back trail.
Rapidly Johnny ran over in his mind the circumstances which led up to this moment. He had gone to the manager’s office at the time appointed, and there had been given the car, equipped with the strangely valuable connecting-rods. He had been instructed to draw on the company for expense money when necessary, to report progress once a week, to make his way to the Pacific coast and back.
The outgoing journey had been wonderful. The speeding across broad plains, between waving fields of grain, the climbing of the Rocky mountain and Cascade passes, circling up and up and up, with here a yawning canyon hundreds of feet beneath them, and here, not a hundred feet above them, one of those perpetual banks of snow; all this had given Johnny a new vision of the grandeur and beauty of his native land.
The return trip had been uneventful until they had reached the western edge of the Great American Desert. There in a garage, where they had left their car for a change of tires and to secure a box lunch to take with them in crossing, they had seen a man who roused Johnny’s suspicions.
“Did you see that fellow?” he had asked of Pant, as they left the garage, “the chap standing by the door?”
“Some bird!” Pant had chuckled.
“Looks like a gigantic frog,” Johnny had smiled. “Did you notice what prodigiously long fingers he had, and what spindly legs?”
“I bet he could scratch his ear with his big toe all right,” Pant had laughed. “Some contortionist, maybe.”
At the word “contortionist” Johnny had started. He recalled his struggle back there in the factory with the fellow who appeared to have all the strange characteristics of a contortionist. So strong was the resemblance between this man and the one back in the garage he was tempted to turn back.
But he had called himself fanciful and foolish, and had gone on with Pant for their lunch.
Upon returning to the garage, however, his first thought was of the car. The instant his eyes fell upon it a quick exclamation had escaped his lips, and he bounded forward.
Dressed in a suit of unionalls, and bending over the engine, had been the slim stranger.
“Hey, there! What’s up?” Johnny had demanded.
“Tunin’ her up a bit. Why? What’s worry’n’ yuh?”
Johnny eyed the stranger angrily.
“That’s our car. We didn’t order any work done in it.”
“Your car?” The other had straightened up in amazement, real or cleverly pretended. “Why, then I’m workin’ on the wrong jitney! Beg your pardon. I’ll put her back in shape. Won’t take but a minute.”
“I’ll tend to it myself,” Johnny had said rather shortly.
“Oh! All right, brother. No quarrel about that!” The stranger had gathered up his tools and had backed away.
Johnny’s heart had skipped a beat when he saw how close a shave it had been; two of the connecting-rods were all but free from their fastenings, and the others might have been in a few moments more.
“I’d like to have him pinched,” he grumbled, “but what’s the use. They’d say we were crazy. You can’t tell them the whole truth, and you can’t have a man arrested for working on the wrong car by mistake.”
Pant nodded a sympathetic assent.
They had taken the desert trail with many misgivings. This roaring red demon behind told them that their fears were well founded. They did not know how many men there were in the car, but there were probably two to their one, and the other men were doubtless heavily armed. There could be no doubting their purpose. They were after the steel.
“Looks bad!” Johnny groaned, as he braced himself in the seat and prepared to give the car three more notches of gas, hoping against hope the meanwhile that they would heave in sight of some sheep-herder’s shack or some truck caravan coming from the other direction. Well he knew that, on this unfrequented road, the chance was slight.
They were speeding up. The car swayed from side to side like a drunken man. It tossed this way and that like a ship in a high sea. Now they careened to the right, and, running on two wheels, plunged madly forward, to swing back and go whirling to the left.
All this time Johnny, with hands grimly gripping the wheel, with eyes glued upon the road, was, in his subconscious mind, counting the cost. It had been his chance. Now he was going to lose. He had hoped that this trip would mean much toward wiping out his debt of honor. That was all over now. He had made, he hoped, a good impression on his employer. This, too, would be forgotten. With the valuable steel parts stolen, the work of their weeks of travel would be lost. The secret formula, too, might be discovered. And all this because he had not taken precaution to see that the wily stranger was clear of the neighborhood before they started across the desert.
A hill loomed ahead. The slight climb ended in a broad, flat plateau. Here the alkali dust disappeared. Straight, hard and smooth for a mile, perhaps two miles, the road stretched.
Johnny’s heart gave a bound of hope. What was beyond the brow of that plateau?
All this time his mind was wandering back to Pant. Sitting there silently in the back seat, his eyes glued upon the road, he seemed oblivious to all else. There had been a time when Johnny would have considered him equal to the task of stopping the pursuers by some magic power. By the flash of a crimson light, which appeared to come from his very eyes, he had seen him stop a hungry tiger stalking its prey. But those were the days in which Pant wore a cap pulled well down and a pair of immense black goggles. There had been mystery behind this cap and those goggles. Pant without them seemed shorn of his magic power, like Samson when shorn of his hair.
Down the smooth, straight stretch of road they sped, and for one mile at least the red demon gained not one single yard.
But as they reached the end of that plateau, grim despair gripped the boy’s heart. Far and away lay only the uneven volcanic ash and the sagebrush. Not a house, not an automobile, not a cattleman’s pony dotted the landscape, and from this promontory one might see miles.
“Might as well wreck her.” Johnny ground his teeth. “We’re stuck here. If they catch us they’ll strip her, and you can’t run a car without connecting-rods. Old boat,” he groaned, “we’ll stick to the trail till we crash or they run us down.”
The car gave a lurch, all but turned over, righted itself and shot down the ridge.
“Hey!” Johnny caught Pant’s voice at his elbow. “Guess you can ease up a bit now. No use takin’ too many chances. I think by the looks of it, their car’s on fire!”
Johnny slowed down, then looked back. He could not believe Pant. He looked again. It was true; above the dull brown cloud of dust was a white and black cloud of smoke.
“Couldn’t be the sagebrush?” said Johnny, rubbing his eyes.
“Don’t think so,” said Pant, climbing back into the front seat. “Sagebrush wouldn’t make that kind of smoke; besides, it’s green and wouldn’t burn.” The car bumped along at a milder pace. The red demon, now unmistakably ablaze, reached the crest of the plateau and stopped. Men swarmed out of her.
“Four of ’em,” Pant chuckled. “Fine chance we’d have had against ’em!”
“They’re waving at us,” said Johnny, after a glance over his shoulder.
“Let ’em wave. Think we’re green, I guess. Expect us to come right back and play things into their hands. Be a car or something along here to-day or to-morrow, sure. Won’t hurt ’em to eat dust awhile. That’s the job they meant to give us, all right.”
Ten miles farther on they stopped for lunch. As Johnny drew the lunch-box from beneath the back seat, he noticed a long, slim leather case lying on the floor of the car. As he picked it up, he was astonished at the weight of it.
“What’s this, Pant?” he asked in a surprised tone.
“That? Why that”—Pant seemed unduly excited—“that’s a little emergency case I always carry with me.”
He put out his hand for it, and having it, at once fastened it to his belt beneath his jacket.
“Emergency case?” thought Johnny. “I wonder what kind.” But as usual he asked no questions.
He was destined to remember that case and the unusual circumstances of the burning car many days later.
The long, dark corridors of the vast automobile and airplane factory were silent. The same old ponderous machines loomed here and there, while smaller ones stood sentry everywhere. At the end of one long alleyway a small light gleamed. Flickering first to the right, then to the left, it cast gigantic shadows against the walls.
Two boys were working over a “mule.” A mule in a factory, as you will remember, is one of those hard-working, snub-nosed little motors that drag trucks about from department to department. The boys were working over the motor of this mule. There came now and then the metallic clink of a wrench, or the tap tap of a hammer, followed by a grunt of satisfaction or disgust.
“There!” Johnny Thompson straightened up and stretched his cramped muscles. “I guess she’s about ready to move.”
The trip across-continent and the return had been accomplished. Aside from the stirring adventure on the desert, they had met with no unusual experiences. The connecting-rods, struck from the steel of mysterious composition, had performed wonderfully well. When measured by instruments that were exact to the ten-thousandth part of an inch, it had been found that they had worn down only thirty-four ten thousandths of an inch, while connecting-rods of the best known commercial steel would have worn one hundred and forty-two ten thousandths of an inch in making the same mileage. Small figures, but in the history of steel they promised to mark an epoch.
The inventor’s mind was improving but he had not as yet succeeded in recalling the formula. While hoping for his recovery, the boys were preparing to make a more rigorous test of this new steel. The company were manufacturing a new type of seaplane. Every afternoon the two boys, togged out in aviator’s garb, were learning to fly this new plane. It was planned that, when the boys found themselves to be perfect masters of this new vehicle of the air, the six connecting-rods should be placed in the motor of the seaplane, and that it be shipped to the Pacific coast. There, under ideal conditions, they were to test out, not only the connecting-rods, but the seaplane, flying, as a last trial, a thousand miles or more.
The pay Johnny had received for the cross-continent trip had enabled him to make a large payment on his debt of honor. As for Pant, he, for the first time in his life, had a savings account.
During their forenoons they were busy in the factory. At times Johnny thought of the vial of dark liquid that reposed on the shelf in the laboratory, the one he had placed there the night he made the analysis of the mysterious steel. At one time while in the laboratory he had glanced up to make sure it was there. It was still in its place. He had been tempted to tell the chemist about it but was afraid of being laughed at.
“Never mind,” he told himself, “in time I will learn to make a chemical analysis myself. Then I’ll see what’s what.”
The question of the strange white fire puzzled him at times. He wondered, too, how the automobile of the contortionist had happened to catch fire in the desert. But these were mere vague wonderings which had no answer.
Though they were well occupied during the day, the boys found time at night for working upon a new, strange problem of which as yet, their friend, Mr. McFarland, the president and manager, knew nothing. It was this problem that occupied their minds at the present moment. It was a stirring moment. Many nights they had spent working over a new type of engine, one that had never been set in a motor vehicle before. Now it was ready for the try-out.
“Track clear?” breathed Johnny.
“All clear,” Pant whispered back.
“All right; here goes!”
There followed a series of sudden sharp explosions. These increased rapidly until they became a loud and insistent purr. Then, with the force and speed of a frightened pig, the little motor car shot forward.
The movement was too sudden for the boys. Johnny was thrown backward upon the floor. Pant, thrown in a wild whirl to the right, saw the motor, a black streak, shoot down the dark alley-way.
“She’s got speed,” he muttered.
The wild snorting of the motor awakened echoes in every corner of the factory. This was followed almost immediately by a deafening crash.
Pant started quickly forward, then paused. Johnny was now on his feet.
“Did she explode or hit the wall?” Pant asked.
“Hit the wall.”
Johnny rubbed his bruised head ruefully.
“Wouldn’t believe she could make such time.”
“That was a powerful engine.”
The two boys were now on the run. They arrived at the scene of the disaster just ahead of a tall man carrying a flashlight and a bunch of keys.
This man—the watchman—flashed his light upon the bent and twisted metal that lay against the wall, then demanded sternly:
“What’s that?”
“That,” said Johnny with a wry smile, “is a pile of scrap.”
“Don’t get fresh,” the watchman warned. “What is it?”
“It’s what I said it is,” said Johnny seriously. “If you want to know what it was, I’ll tell you; it was a dust-eating mule.”
The watchman’s mouth flew open. “A—A,” he sputtered incredulously. “I told you before, young fellow, don’t get fresh.” He moved a hand toward Johnny menacingly.
“I have told you the truth,” said Johnny stoutly. “Perhaps I should have said a dust-burning mule. That’s what she was. It wouldn’t be a bit of good to explain to you; you wouldn’t understand, and besides, I don’t want to. That’s our secret. We have permission from Mr. McFarland to conduct experiments here nights.”
“But you have no permission to endanger men’s lives.”
“That’s right,” Johnny admitted; “we were a bit careless.”
“I’ll just turn the facts in to the boss and you can fight it out with him,” said the watchman sourly as he turned away.
“Well, that’s that,” said Johnny sorrowfully. “It’s a complete loss. We’ll have to begin all over again. But from that little test I am convinced that the engine has a wonderful future.”
“This particular one had a brief but eventful past, I’d say,” grinned Pant.
After one more look at the wreck, they turned and went their way.
That night before he fell asleep Johnny reviewed in his mind the events that led up to the happenings of that evening.
He, Johnny, had been standing on the steps of the official entrance to the plant one afternoon, when Mr. McFarland had said to him: “Johnny, please go down to the north gate and request that old man to go away. He is stopping the workers as they pass and trying to engage them in conversation. He looks like he is a propagandist for some radical organization trying to make the men discontented. Get rid of him if you can.”
The man had turned out to be not a radical at all, but a friendly and harmless old man who was seeking some one who could be interested in a new type of engine which he had invented. Such a fine spoken and polished old gentleman had he proved to be that Johnny had been prevailed upon to accompany him to his home to see the engine.
He had found the home of the aged inventor to be a fourth-floor back flat, being merely two dark rooms upon an alley. Here, with his wife, a pleasant-faced old lady, he lived and labored.
“You see,” he had said, as he uncovered the engine with the dramatic movement of one who unveils a great work of art, “this engine of mine is different from all other internal-combustion engines. It doesn’t burn gasoline; it burns dust.”
“Dust!” Johnny had exclaimed.
“Dust!” the old man had smiled. “Watch it!”
He touched a lever. There followed a succession of rapid and sharp explosions. These increased in number per second until they became a prolonged purr, as the one in the “mule” had done. The engine was now revolving at full speed.
“You see?” the old man had smiled. “She runs—on dust!”
“On dust,” Johnny had repeated in a daze.
The old man had touched the lever and the engine had stopped.
“You think it strange,” the old man had smiled, motioning Johnny to a chair and taking one himself; “but, after all, is it so strange? The first internal-combustion engine, we have it on good authority, did not burn gasoline but a composition of gun powder and other substances. The greatest grain elevator in the world was destroyed by a dust explosion. Billions of fine particles of carbon dust gathered in the air space above the wheat. A spark touched it off. A tremendous explosion followed. There is unlimited power there. Why not harness it?
“You are looking,” he pointed at the engine, “upon the motor power of the future. It ran, as you saw a moment ago, on coal dust, a very finely powdered coal dust. A little is let in at a time. A slight ash is formed. This drops out at the top of the cylinder, as you will see the engine runs inverted. It was burning coal dust, but any carbon dust will do. Wood ground fine, wheat dust, peat dust, any carbon dust will drive it. Think what that means to the world-traveler of the future! No more disgusting waiting for gasoline; no more weary miles on foot. You land in the heart of Africa, India, Siberia. You have with you a small grinder like a wheat mill. It is run by batteries. You are out of fuel. You merely grind up a dry tree-trunk, a sack of wheat or a few pounds of coal, and you are away again.”
“Sounds like a dream,” Johnny had sighed.
“It is a dream—a dream that has come true,” the old man had fairly shouted. “All that is needed is capital to perfect larger motors, to put them upon the market. If only your president can be made to see it, as you and I see it—”
“I’ll try,” Johnny had gripped the old inventor’s hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The next night Pant had accompanied Johnny to the aged inventor’s room, and there over some wonderful coffee and doughnuts prepared by the inventor’s wife, they talked over the future of the strange dust-burning engine.
It was decided that, since the engine had never been tried out in any vehicle, Johnny and Pant should obtain permission to experiment with it in the factory after hours to perfect it further before it was presented to the busy president.
Three weeks of spare time experimenting had resulted in the complete wreck of the engine, smashed against a brick wall.
“Now we’ll have to begin all over again, and because that watchman turns us in we’ll have to show our plans to the president,” said Johnny.
The revealing of their plans was not the misfortune they thought it, for Mr. McFarland at once became keenly interested in the enterprise. He took them off their regular work and set them doing full time in experimenting with this new engine.
In two weeks they had a new mule doing double-quick time all over the shop. Another two weeks saw them riding about the streets of the city in a car driven by a dust-burning motor.
Their happiness knew no bounds. Boundless, too, were their ambitions. This should be the airplane engine of the future. Two twelve-cylinder motors were manufactured for the seaplane they were to drive and the plane and motors were shipped to the Pacific coast where, over the placid waters of a bay, they might experiment with little danger of disaster.
They had been on the Pacific coast, driving the plane equipped with the two dust-burning motors and with one of the motors using the six connecting-rods of mysterious steel, for a week when one day Johnny decided to make a short drive over the country alone. Not suspecting that anyone could, this time, be on their trail, he told Pant of his intention while in the lobby of their hotel while a number of persons were present.
He made a successful trip of some two hundred miles. A fog had blown up from the sea but he knew the location of a beautiful mountain lake which he had often longed to visit. On an island in this lake, he had been told, were to be found traces of the wonderful fossilized forests for which the West is famous.
By circling low he succeeded in locating the placid surface of the lake and in making a creditable landing. Unbuckling his harness he rose stiffly, stretched his cramped limbs, then, turning hastily, unlashed a small skiff from the back of the fuselage and, having tossed it lightly into the water, seized the paddle, leaped into the skiff and paddled rapidly toward the shore.
He had been gone for perhaps five minutes when, without warning, from out of the white fog there appeared the prow of a small motorboat. The engine was not going. The two occupants of the boat were rowing, each with one oar. Their destination, beyond doubt, was the seaplane.
Not a word was spoken until the taller of the two men, a strange-appearing fellow with unusually long fingers, put out a hand and, steadying himself for a moment, leaped from the boat to the lower wing of the plane.
“Work fast,” the shorter man cautioned in a whisper. “He may be back any moment.”
“Count on me. Don’t want any mix-up. Nasty business,” whispered the other, then with a spring he was away down the length of the plane. The next minute he had climbed to a narrow platform parallel with the powerful motors which hung suspended halfway between the upper and lower planes.
Drawing a wrench and a pair of pliers from his pocket, he worked over the engine to the right for some eight or ten minutes. When he had finished, he mumbled something that sounded like:
“Guess that’ll slow him up,” then thrusting his tools, together with some other small objects, into his pocket, he leaped back to the plane, and, racing down its length, sprang into the motorboat.
“Thought you had decided to stay,” grumbled the waiting man.
“Time enough,” the other drawled. Seizing his oar, he pushed the boat away from the plane.
The next moment they disappeared silently into the fog. They had been gone but an incredibly short time when Johnny reappeared in his shallow skiff.
“Well, she’s still here,” he breathed with a sigh of satisfaction. “Guess I ought not to take such chances, but who’d be out here that knows our secret?”
He climbed happily back to his seat in the plane, buckled on his harness, then touched his lever.
But what was this? The engine gave a few sput-sputs, then stopped dead.
“What?”
He could not believe his senses. He tried it again. No better results.
Snatching off his harness, he leaped to the platform beside the motor.
For a moment his eyes and his fingers played over the line of spark plugs of the twelve-cylinder motor, as a skilled musician plays over the keys of an organ.
Then his face went blank.
“Changed!” he muttered. “Somebody’s been here. That spark plug there; never had one like that. And that one; I cracked the enamel when I put one in there. It’s gone. Perfectly good-looking one there now. Somebody’s tampered—”
He drew from his pocket a wrench. Quickly unscrewing the spark plug, he placed it on top of the cylinder, then gave the propeller a whirl.
“No spark,” he mumbled. “Dead! Dead as a last year’s ragweed!”
Again he paused in thought.
The next moment he was all action. Dropping to the fuselage, he dragged from within the space back of the seat numerous odds and ends of wooden rods, coils of wire, clamps, bolts and glass insulators. These he pieced together with incredible speed. At length a wire-strung pole was thrust high in air. Wires were attached at the bottom, a receiver thrust over his head, and then, seated in his place before the wheel, he was allowing his fingers to play upon the key of a wireless.
“Sput—sput—sput!” The snap of the electric current sounded above him. He was sending out an S. O. S. addressed to Pant at the home station.
“Sput-sput-sput,” the instrument sounded again and again. Each time he waited for an answer. At last, to his great joy, it came. The buzzing in his receiver resolved itself into the dots and dashes of the Morse code: “Shoot, Pant.”
“Thank God!” Johnny exclaimed.
The purpose of the intruders was plain enough. They had hoped to drive Johnny to desert his plane in this lonely spot, then they would return and strip it of its priceless steel at their leisure.
“I’ll show them!” he hissed.
Again his fingers played on the key. He instructed Pant to bring twelve spark plugs to the island on Lake Poncetrane. He was to make a landing there, if possible, then to bring the spark plugs to the northeast corner of the island where he, Johnny, would be waiting for him.
He listened until the other boy’s O. K. rang in his ears then, removing the receiver from his head, he settled back in his seat. It would be two hours before Pant arrived. Everything would be all right if—suddenly he sat up straight, his brow wrinkled—“if he can land on the island!” he exclaimed; “and I doubt if he can. There’s a small bare space in the very center, and that is covered with rocks; the rest is timbered. If he can’t land, we lose!”
At last he rose and, having drawn himself up beside the motor, busied himself with the task of removing the faulty spark plugs.
“The villains!” he muttered. “It’s a dirty trick!”
He had just completed his task of removing the spark plugs, when there came to his waiting ear the drum of a powerful motor.
“Pant,” he murmured, “good old Pant. He’s made it in record time. Now if only—”
He did not finish. He dared not hope that it could be done.
The thunder of the motor grew louder. The fog had cleared now, and he could see the plane, an airplane Pant had borrowed, like some gigantic dragon fly, drifting down upon him.
Before it reached the spot in the sky above him, it swerved to the right and went skimming low over the tree-tops of the island.
Johnny made no move to go ashore; there would be time enough for that after Pant had effected a landing—if he did.
For a second or two the drum of the motor ceased, and Johnny’s heart stopped beating with it. Could Pant make it?
But again came the thunder of the motor. Again the plane appeared above the trees. He had not found a safe landing place.
Once more the plane circled over the island, then dipped out of sight. Again the motor stopped. This time Johnny was sure Pant had been successful, but again his hopes fell, for the plane rose to circle once more.
Four times he attempted it; four times failed.
“Can’t do it. It’s no use!” Johnny sank limply down into his seat.
But Pant was swinging around. He was preparing to pass low over the seaplane. What could he want?
As he came scudding along with engine shut off, Johnny heard him shout:
“Watch this!”
The next moment he saw his hand shoot out. Something dropped from that hand. Straight down it dropped for a hundred feet, then something resembling a parachute filled with air appeared, and checked its fall.
Quickly Johnny leaped into his skiff and was away to the spot where this miniature parachute would fall. The thing was heavy. Could he reach it before it dragged the parachute to the bottom of the lake? Straining every muscle, he sent the skiff flying over the surface of the water.
The parachute had fallen into the lake. Now he was a hundred feet from it, now fifty, now twenty-five, and now—now, his hand shot out and seized it just as, water-logged, it was beginning to sink.
As he dragged the cloth affair from the water, from his lips there escaped a glad shout. Attached to the parachute’s cord were three spark plugs.
Hardly had he made this discovery than there came again the shout:
“Watch this!”
He did watch, and did do his best, but in spite of his efforts the second parachute sank before he reached it.
But there were others. Twice more he succeeded and three times failed. But he now had nine new spark plugs. Surely there were enough.
Paddling hastily to the plane, he made the changes, dropped into his seat, and again touched his lever. This time there came a welcome burst of thunder and he was away.
He gazed for a second behind him to see Pant, his purpose fulfilled, speeding away toward home.
“That,” smiled Johnny, “was a clever trick. I’d never have thought of it. But trust good old Pant for that. Who’d have thought, though,” his brow wrinkled, “that old Slim Jim, the contortionist, was still on our trail?”
Strangely enough, during the days that followed the contortionist put in no second appearance.
Three weeks of testing proved to them that their engines were a complete success. Then began what proved to be their great adventure.
There came to them a short, bald-headed man of middle age, with a letter from Mr. McFarland, their employer.
The letter read: “This gentleman, Professor Paul Lasky, is a very close friend of mine. He may ask you to do something difficult and dangerous. Do it if you can, for his cause is worthy and his need imperative.”
The stranger was not slow in laying his needs before them. A tramp steamer had gone on the shoals of a coral island some two thousand miles from the Pacific coast of America. Some passengers and members of the crew had been drowned. The others had been rescued. The wreck was driven high on the sand in a sheltered bay, so she would not break up at once. Some hardy adventurers, claiming to have owned the steamer, had put off in another steamer four days previous with the purpose of salvaging her cargo. It was imperative that he, the professor, should reach the wreck before them. A seaplane was the only craft that could bring him to the island in time, and of all the air-craft then on the coast, none had the possibilities of such protracted flight save their own. He wished them to take him there. The reward would be ample and, should his mission be successfully accomplished, they would be real benefactors of mankind, since some tens of thousands of children would be benefited.
Johnny and Pant held a long consultation. The undertaking was a serious one. Could it be that the stranger knew the type of engine their plane carried? His mission must indeed be an important one if a mere landsman, accustomed to neither the sea nor the air, would attempt such a perilous flight to accomplish it.
“What can it be?” Johnny demanded of Pant.
“Can’t tell. Some treasure on the ship, perhaps.”
“But the ship and the cargo belong to the men who have gone to strip the wreck, don’t they?”
“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps, at least, not all.”
“Well, if you are ready to undertake it, I am.”
“You’re on!” exclaimed Pant, gripping Johnny’s hand. “It will be a wonderful test for our motors.”
“And I don’t think our contortionist friend can follow us,” smiled Johnny.
Twenty hours later, after having covered fifteen hundred miles in steady flight, they realized that it was indeed to be a wonderful test for their motors, and to them as well; a test out of which they might never emerge.
They were sailing high over a boundless expanse of water, when Johnny suggested that they drop to the level of the sea and rest their motors for an hour as they drifted, sea-gull-like, on the surface of the gently heaving ocean.
“Perfectly calm down there,” he called through his speaking-tube.
“Guess so.” Pant, who was acting as pilot, set her nose downward and slowed his engine for volplaning.
As they neared the surface of the water, an exclamation of surprise escaped Pant’s lips.
“Why, she’s rolling in great billows. Not a breath of air, either!”
“It’s stifling,” grumbled Johnny.
Pant gave one look at the barometer. Instantly his face clouded.
“Didn’t know the glass could drop so low,” he mumbled. “Nasty weather coming. Can’t float on that water. Better climb back up.”
Slowly the plane climbed skyward again. When she had reached a high altitude, with the suddenness of thought she ceased to climb.
It was as if she had run, head on, into an immense filmy veil of silk that hung from the high heavens, its fringe touching the sea. The veil was dark, the darkness of midnight blue. It seized the plane and set it twirling, whirling, pitching, plunging. It was as if a giant hand had seized the veil from above and twisted it, as one twists a damp towel to wring it.
It was then that Pant at the wheel lost all control. Johnny, in the cabin, became an over-large punching-bag. Harnessed to his seat from every side, he swung now into space, and now jammed hard into place, to feel himself banged against the side of the narrow cabin. With head sunk limply forward, with his whole body relaxed, he waited dumbly for the end. What that end might be, he could not even guess. They were caught in a typhoon, hundreds of miles from land, somewhere in mid-Pacific.
When they struck the typhoon Johnny had the courage to hope that Pant might bring them out of it in safety. This, however, seemed scarcely believable. The cabin, a moment before stuffy as a clothes closet, was now as breezy as a mosquito-bar tent in a stiff wind. She was battened tight, too. The mad whirl of the plane made Johnny dizzy and sick. His ears were full of strange sounds. The creak and groan of planes, stays and guys, that seemed about to snap, was mingled with the thunder of the engines. Above all this, like the voice of some mad siren’s spirit filled with hatred and revenge, rang out the shrill scream of the wind. Johnny’s eyes were blinded by strange weird lights—red, yellow and purple—flash upon flash.
“Must be in the midst of the gigantic smithy where lightning bolts are forged,” he grumbled, as he closed his eyes tight and took one more mad whirl that it seemed must be the craft’s last.
But at that, the seemingly last moment, the whirling gale took a strange turn. The plane hung motionless in mid-air. By good fortune she stood right side up. Her planes were as yet unimpaired.
She was a staunch craft. Not a stick, nor wire, nor screw but had been tested and doubly inspected before they went into her. Her two twelve-cylinder engines, lying one beside the other above the fuselage, were bound and braced from every side. Johnny thought of all this as they lay there suspended in space.
It was a lull; he understood that well enough. A strange lull it was, too, as if the storm had taken their frail craft into its gigantic fist, as an ape holds a fledgling bird in his horny claw before crashing it against the trunk of a tree.
Johnny’s lips were pressed to the speaking-tube. “We’re in for it!” he shrilled to his pal.
“Yes?” came back from Pant.
“How you standing it?”
Pant retorted with a grim chuckle:
“Not so bad. Pretty wet out here.”
“What—what’ll we do?”
“Going to climb. Top to this thing somewhere, maybe. Nobody knows, though. It’s a typhoon. Always wanted to see what a plane’d do in a typhoon.”
“You’ll see, but never tell, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“Look out—here she comes again! It’s—”
“Yes, it’s—” Pant’s voice seemed blown back into him by the terrific gust of wind. The next instant, a darkness such as he had never seen; a tumult such as he had never heard; a torrent of rain such as he had never witnessed; a wild whirling such as he had never experienced, drove all power of thought from his befuddled brain, leaving him again a half-animate, over-large punching-bag, swinging in the narrow center of the cabin.
Even in this dizzy state of half-consciousness he thought of Pant. When told that he might not escape disaster, he had not said, “I have escaped before.” He might have said it, for there had been other adventures; a night in a forest in India, with a mad black leopard’s eyes gleaming at him out of the darkness; an hour in a dungeon-dark cave, with murderous savages about him. There had been other adventures, too, and he had escaped; yet he did not say, “I will again.” That was the kind of fellow he was. Confident of his ability, interested in all of life, thrilled by each new experience, he stood ready to face each one as it came and do battle valiantly, leaving the results to a power greater, a mind wiser, than his own.