CHAPTER XXII

WINGING WESTWARD

At midnight Hal Dane made his decision. He snatched a few hours' sleep. Then in the early dawning he went out to inspect the Mazarin Field runway. Not so good--ground wet and heavy with days of drenching rain! But as the downpour seemed scheduled to continue indefinitely, things could only get worse instead of better. So--well, it might as well be now!

In spite of the foreboding, heavy weather, Hal Dane's heart was light. The past days of indecision had sat like a burden upon his soul, and now that his mind was finally and firmly made up, he suddenly went ecstatic, happy beyond all measure.

He caught himself whistling as he gave his plane its last thorough looking over. It seemed to be in perfect shape. Whew! What a beauty it was! He slid an affectionate hand along its polished length as the men trundled it out into the field. There he slung aboard his provisions and water, climbed in and gave the signal for the blocks to be knocked away.

The motor roared and the plane started down the runway.

"Wish I were going too," yelled the red-headed McGinnis as he raced alongside.

"Wish so--" Hal's words were lost in the thud of the motor. The machine labored forward, gathering speed slowly. Wet, muddy ground and the last load of fuel seemed to have rooted it to earth. Would it never rise? Was this splendid attempt to meet disaster in the very beginning?

At last the heavily-loaded Wind Bird began to lift gallantly, rose to barely clear the tree line, then zoomed up into the sky.

Even at this unearthly hour, a horde of spectators milled on the ground below, their hearts' hopes rising with this brilliant attempt of young Dane. For the young fellow, the shyest of heroes, who had run away from his first taste of fame, had overnight fired the enthusiasm of the whole nation.

As though lifted on the shouts of the onlookers, the lone flyer in his Wind Bird took the air and went up, up into the heights.

He leveled out for a while to get speed, then rose another thousand feet.

Hal Dane had taken off at a little after six o'clock in the morning, and he had headed out with his back directly to the rising sun--or at least with his back to the place where the sun would have been seen rising if the cloud banks had not hidden it.

In a few moments, the skyscrapers of San Francisco, looking white and spectral, were swallowed up in the gray-brown pall that enshrouded the Golden Gate. Hal's last picture of them was of mere tower tops that seemed to hang like a magic city in the clouds. A forerunner this, of the mirages he was to encounter later on, when magic cities would seem to rise before his tired eyes, then crumble away among the clouds.

Below him swept an immensity of ocean, the color of ashes in the misty haze. Nowhere was there any mark to guide him. From now on he must rely entirely upon his instruments, and Hal began to keep a wary eye upon his inductor compass.

That compass was the most remarkable of all the splendid equipment features of the Wind Bird. It was based upon the principle of the relation between the earth's magnetic field and the magnetic field generated in the airplane. When the plane's course had been set so that the needle registered zero on this compass, any deviation would cause the needle to swing away from zero in the direction of the error. Such an error could be corrected by flying the plane with the needle at the same distance on the other side of zero, and for the same time that the error had been committed. This would set the aircraft's nose back on her course again.

When well out over the ocean, he took calculations and set his course due northwest. He was figuring on covering the ocean in a crescent-shaped sweep that would have the advantage of sighting the Aleutian chain of land points at better than midway, and it was a course that he hoped would send him well within the range of certain air currents.

As his course steadied, the roar of his ninefold engine assumed a pleasing grandeur, like music flung out over these far spaces. The motor was working to perfection, humming along under its mighty load. It was a comfort to know too that every pound of fuel burned meant a lightening of the weight and an added capacity for speed, more speed.

In a flare of fire, the sunlight burst through the gray world of clouds. The rainstorm was lifting. Weather conditions that had frowned so on his take-off were changing to a golden glory to speed him onward. But Hal Dane knew all too well that this fickle glory of sunshine could change back to black thunderheads in the twinkling of an eye.

To the right of his plane, he caught a glimpse of a faint dark blurred line. That could be the west coast, the land of America that he was speeding away from now in a northwestern diagonal.

Was this blurred glimpse all that he'd ever see of land again? Who could tell? He might land safe on those other shores, and again, a hundred different causes could crash his gallant sky ship into the gray waves, to sink eventually to the ocean bottom.

Hal squared back his shoulders, lifted his head. He would force dark thoughts out of his mind. There must only be room in his plans for hope.

He sent the throttle up a notch. More speed! His heart caught the lift of power from the throbbing motor. Exultation, and the wild spirit of the Vikings surged through his veins. His Norse ancestors had crossed an ocean in a frail sea skiff. And now he, like some atom adrift in the immense wastes of the sky, was daring the air currents on man-made wings. Hal Dane felt a thrill of power and glory shoot through him. It was speed on to whatever the end was, to death, or to victory!

For this longest of long distance flights where every extra pound counted against success, Hal had stripped his plane to the barest necessities of weight in food and equipment. Then at the last minute he had carried things, light as air, yet weighty in a certain kind of content. God-speed telegrams from his mother, from the faculty of his old flying school, from Colonel Wiljohn! There was also a yellow slip of telegraphic paper bearing him congratulations and word that his gyroscope had won the Onheim Prize. The hopes and thoughts of his friends were going with him on this wild venture.

All unknown to him, the thoughts of a nation were following the Wind Bird. A ship that had glimpsed a flyer going up coast had radioed word back. Other messages swept through the air from a far-out fishing fleet where the lone flyer crossed human sea trails again. This word was bulletined in theaters and picture show houses, was on a million lips. Wind Bird had gone thus far. How was the weather? Could he make it?

At midday the lone flyer checked up position and headed out over the Pacific in a more westerly direction. Far to the north of him would be situated Sitka, behind him should lie Vancouver--it was in this air range that he, on preliminary explorations, had located a great current of the wind that flowed west in the heights.

If he and the Wind Bird could efficiently ride this current it would mean speed such as he had heretofore only dreamed of, would mean time and fuel-saving in the great Trans-Pacific crossing.

In preparation for his chill rise up into the earth's stratosphere, or upper air, Hal Dane snugly closed the throat of his heavily padded, leather-covered suit of down and feathers. Fur-lined moccasins over his boots, and a leather head mask lined with fur, which with the oxygen mask entirely covered the face, completed the costume. His goggles had already been specially prepared with an inside coating of anti-freezing gelatine, supposed to prevent the formation of ice to minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Ice on the inside of the goggles would be a temporary blind, as Hal well knew.

Worse than the terrible cold was the lack of oxygen he would have to combat up in the heights of rarefied air. But a marvelous artificial aid had been prepared for this also. In the Wind Bird was installed a special oxygen apparatus that could furnish him a strong flow of life-giving gas through a tube adjusted to the mouthpiece of his helmet. With minute care, Hal examined every section of his two separate systems of gaseous oxygen, the main system, and the emergency system. He wanted to be very sure that nothing was left to mere luck. Other men before him had ridden high. But today, he must ride the highest stratosphere if he were to really explore the vast speeding wind river that his other searchings had merely tapped.

Hal Dane began to climb. By degrees he forced the Wind Bird up, the curved vacuum of her specially-built wing meeting the air-pull from above to aid in a mighty lifting.

Up he went in great sweeping spirals, ever mounting higher and higher, the engine of the Wind Bird working beautifully. The altimeter told him he was at the height of seventeen thousand feet,--now he had reached eighteen, nineteen, twenty thousand! His ship was still climbing, acting beautifully. But he, Hal Dane, was not acting right. In the face of triumph, his whole sky world went suddenly gray and dreary, he felt a queer lassitude, and a slowing up of faculties.

The oxygen! In the excitement, he had forgotten to draw on it!

With a languid movement, he thrust the tube into his mask. A few deep breaths and his gray world brightened. More oxygen, more,--and he had changed back into his old self, ready to think and act quickly.

Now he was entering into a favorable wind that sped him in the rise. He went to thirty thousand feet.

Thirty-four thousand! Thirty-five! Thirty-six!

The cold was now intense. For all his furred garments, there was no shutting out the frigidity. It ate to the very marrow. But Hal Dane's heart was hot within him, burning in its thrill of exultation. He was riding thirty-eight thousand feet above the earth, and riding with the whizzing speed of a bullet shot from a mighty gun. His plane, capable of two hundred miles an hour, had slid into a two-hundred-mile wind here in the upper air, and it was hurtling forward at the appalling speed of four hundred miles per hour.

Speed--speed! Hal Dane's heart throbbed hot and wild. He was riding faster than ever mortal rode before, swooping before the mad currents of the river of the wind. The crossing of the great Pacific will now be a matter of hours--not a matter of days. And his the Viking sky boat that first dared the fierce gale of the wind path!

The gale he was riding gathered power. His speedometer mounted erratically, jerking up records of additional fives and tens of miles. Ten--twenty, thirty--four hundred and forty miles per hour.

A curious vibration of his engine startled him. But he drove away all thoughts of danger. The mileage was a magnet that held his eyes. Speed, speed! Riding high and fast! The sky was his height limit. He was reeling off a record. He must hold to it, must speed on.

Riding higher and faster than any human since creation! Thrilling thought--thrilling thought--thrilling thought--his head was knocking queerly. He leaned forward, and the instruments in the cockpit became dim and shaky. He was drifting into a semi-delirium from which he could not seem to rouse himself. His mind refused to focus upon what it must do.

His dulling senses caught a thud-thud-thud! Engine vibration so great that it seemed the machine must tear apart!