“Just to think,” said Hiram, gazing longingly at the ocean—“just a bit of water to cover, and we are on home territory.”
“Yes,” smiled our hero, “it looks nice and easy on the map. Remember one thing, though, fellows: here at Mayamlia we take in full supplies. The food and fuel will be easy as far as Helena or Trinidad. Between those points and the final flight to Rio, though, the gasoline supply is what we must look out for.”
“We’re going to make it—I feel it in my bones!” crowed the optimistic Hiram Dobbs.
“This is serious, fellows,” spoke Dave. “Get ready for the worst.”
“What is the worst?” inquired Elmer Brackett.
“A sudden drop. You had better have the breeches buoys ready.”
“Oh, Dave!” cried Hiram Dobbs, in actual distress. “You don’t mean to say that the brave old _Comet_ is going back on us just as it looks as though the home stretch is right ahead of us?”
“It’s the fog, fellows,” explained Dave. “We have beaten around in it for twelve hours, until I feel certain we are all out of our course. In a word, we are lost.”
“Lost in the air!” exclaimed Hiram—“who’d ever have thought of it!”
“Yes, just like a ship in strange waters,” said Dave. “If we were not so far from the mainland we left last week, there might be some hope. According to my calculation, we have missed St. Helena. If that is true, we can count on no land this side of Trinidad.”
“That must be hundreds of miles away,” remarked Hiram.
“Worse than that,” declared Elmer, who was pretty well posted on chart and “log” details. “If the fog would only lift!”
“That is our only hope,” declared Dave. “I do not wish to alarm you, fellows; but we must face the music like men. I don’t believe the _Comet_ will last out six hours.”
“As bad as that?” said Hiram, in a subdued tone.
“Yes,” asserted the young airman. “If we could sight some ship I would not hesitate to descend upon its deck. This fog, of course, shuts out any chance to depend on that. The trouble is with our wires. That strain we had in last night’s wind seems to have played havoc with the entire steering gear.”
“Can’t it be fixed?” inquired Elmer, anxiously.
“Not while we’re flying,” replied Dave. “You know, the post is really a lever and the wheel a handle. The cloche, or bell-like attachment that runs to the warping wires, has got out of kilter. You know, the steering post is made of one-inch, twenty-gauge steel tubing. At the lower end of this is a fork made of pieces of smaller tubing, bent and brazed into place. The fork forms part of the universal joint on which the post is mounted. From this run the warping wires through pulleys to the elevators.”