CHAPTER XXVI

IN A HEAVY STORM

“Do you apprehend any danger to the ship in case of a storm?” asked Professor Snodgrass, calling the question to Mr. Glassford, who was now in the pilot house.

“Oh, no,” was the answer. “I expect we will meet with a storm or two before we finish. There are frequently storms in the upper air that do not get down to the earth. But the _Comet_ is well built, and I am not afraid. I hope you are not, professor.”

“Not in the least, but I was thinking that if there was a storm it might scatter the insects which I hope to capture to illustrate my book on bugs of the upper air.”

“There are some kind of bugs over on this side, near my window, professor,” called Bob.

“Some more mosquitoes, probably,” remarked Jerry as he came back from the steering tower, where Mr. Glassford had relieved him.

“No, they’ve got funny little fuzzy things on their legs. They’re not mosquitoes.”

“Fuzzy things on their legs!” exclaimed the professor. “That is a very rare form of a katydid, which lives only in the upper air. I must catch some.”

He hurried to where Bob was, carrying his long-handled net, and he soon caught more of the odd insects than he cared for. Some he preserved in small boxes, and the others he released.

It grew darker and darker as the clouds gathered, until it was difficult to see more than a few hundred feet away from the motor ship. Still Mr. Glassford pressed on, keeping his course due south.

“I can’t see any of the other airships,” remarked Ned, trying to peer through the gloom.

“Try the telescope,” suggested the inventor, and the lad took a large one from the rack in the cabin. But even with the aid of the powerful glass there was nothing to be seen.

“Better close the cabin windows, light the lamps, and get ready for a bad night,” said Mr. Glassford presently.

The boys did so, and soon, with lamps glowing in the cozy little cabin, even though they knew a bad storm was gathering, every one felt safer.

“I guess it must be supper-time,” remarked Bob.

“Chunky tells by his stomach, not by the clock,” commented Jerry. “All right, Bob, set out the repast, if you like.”

The lad lost no time in complying, having constituted himself cook of the motor ship, and a simple but good meal was soon prepared on the gasolene stove.

“Ned, suppose you take charge in the pilot house while I eat,” called Mr. Glassford down the little flight of stairs which led from the main cabin to the steering tower. “All you have to do is keep everything where I leave it, and maintain a course as near south as you can. We’re making to the west some, as the wind is a little too strong for us, but by changing the angle of the planes we may overcome it a bit.”

Ned, with some anxiety, went to the pilot house, but he had little to do, as most of the machinery was automatic, and he only had to watch the gages and occasionally move a lever or a wheel.

“We’re still making a little too much west,” said Mr. Glassford anxiously when he again took charge. “I think I’ll change our elevation a trifle.”

“Going up or down?” asked Ned.

“Down, I think. I don’t care to be too high up when the storm breaks, as it looks as if it would very soon now.”

Low mutterings of thunder and occasional flashings of lightning bore out this belief. There was no howling of the wind, as there is on earth in a storm, for the reason that the motor ship was being carried right along with the gale, being a part of it, so to speak, and it offered no resistance to the air current. Occasionally, when a cross current blew through the guy wires and gas bag net, there was a low moaning sound, not very cheerful to hear.

Mr. Glassford shifted the elevation rudder, and the ship at once poked her pointed nose toward the earth. It was now very dark, and nothing could be seen outside of the craft. Still, there was no fear of colliding with anything in the upper air, and the pilot might as well have closed his eyes, for all he could see ahead of him.

“Maybe we’ll smash into the red balloon,” suggested Bob. “It must be below and ahead of us.”

“It’s very hard to say where it is,” remarked Jerry, “but I don’t believe there’s any danger of a collision. We’re only a thousand feet high now,” he added, looking at one of the registers in the cabin.

“Yes, and we’re right over some city,” added Ned, opening a cabin window and thrusting his head out to take an observation. “I can see thousands of lights underneath us.”

The other boys also looked, and saw below them what seemed to be millions of tiny fireflies, as they sparkle over a meadow on a June night. They were the lights of a large city, and doubtless the inhabitants of it, if they looked up and saw an illuminated body shooting across the heavens (for the lights of the motor ship could plainly be seen from below), imagined that it was a new style of comet, as, indeed, it was.

Then as Mr. Glassford again shifted the lever of the elevation rudder, the motor ship resumed an even keel and shot along about nine hundred feet above the earth. It was calmer at this elevation, and though the signs of the storm did not abate the travelers hoped they might escape the worst of it.

But the hope was a vain one. Half an hour later, when the boys were beginning to think of seeking their bunks, for they were very tired from the day of preparation, the ship suddenly lurched to one side. It was such a violent motion that Bob, who was walking across the cabin, was thrown into Jerry’s lap, as he sat reading a paper.

“What’s the matter?” cried Professor Snodgrass, looking up from some notes he was making concerning the latest insects he had captured. “Have we landed?”

“We’re in a bad storm,” called Mr. Glassford from the steering tower. “Jerry, you’ll have to come here and help me. I can’t manage everything at once.”

Once more the ship tilted at an unpleasant angle, but Jerry managed to make his way to the pilot house.

“Change the planes!” cried Mr. Glassford, and he had to shout to make his voice heard above the noise of a counter current of wind that was now howling through the rigging of wires and wooden braces. “Shift them about four feet. That may put us on a level keel again,” for the motor ship was now almost in the position of a sailing ship when she has nearly been thrown “on her beam-ends” by a heavy blow and the action of the waves.

Jerry shifted the handles manipulating the planes, while Mr. Glassford steered the ship to one side to take some of the wind pressure off the big areas of taut muslin. An instant later the _Comet_ swung around and floated level. The worth of the aeroplanes had been quickly demonstrated. Without them the ship could not have been so easily managed.

On and on rushed the motor ship, the powerful propellers fairly pulling her through the air. They had left the lighted city far behind, and were now over what was probably open country, for there was no illumination.

Suddenly, with a fierceness that was appalling, the storm broke upon them. There came a dash of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and the fury of the blast fairly bore the craft down.

“We’re falling!” cried Ned as he looked at the hand of the elevation gage and noted that they were steadily approaching the earth.

“Keep cool!” called Jerry from the pilot house.

At the same instant the ship shot upward, for Mr. Glassford, realizing the danger, had shifted the lever to tilt the rudder, and the _Comet_ began to ascend. But as they went higher the storm became worse, until they were right in the midst of it.

All at once the wind shifted, and instead of blowing from the northeast, so as to send the ship in a southeasterly direction, it blew from the east, full, driving the travelers to the west.

“That isn’t the way we want to go,” remarked Bob. “New Orleans doesn’t lie in that direction.”

“I guess we can’t help ourselves,” spoke Ned. “It’s a bad storm.”

Mr. Glassford tried to shift the planes, so as to counteract the changing wind, but he had little success.

“I think I’ll go higher,” he said to Jerry, who stood beside him in the pilot house. “We may be able to get above the storm.”

He pulled the lever toward him. The ship again tilted her nose toward the heavens. The speed of the motor was increased, and the _Comet_ fairly trembled throughout her whole frame. Anxiously did the travelers watch the compass to see if their course would be changed. Up and up shot the airship. Then, with a loud explosion, the motor stopped, and those in the _Comet_ felt her falling rapidly.

“Something’s broken!” cried Jerry as he hurried from the steering tower to the engine compartment.