Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/84

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 * | PITHECANTHROPUS ISLAND
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Illustrated by Marchioni

LL day long, since early morn, with but a brief stop the night before, the three aviators had been winging their way over the turquoise blue waters of the Pacific, weary yet happy over their success so far; the steady symphony of the mighty engines sweet music to their almost deafened ears.

And now the inky blackness of night embraced them in its blind bosom. Still they drove on and on, their metal bird roaring along at nearly a hundred miles an hour toward their goal in distant Australia.

The first faint streaks of the dawn cheered them on their great transoceanic adventure—the spanning of the mighty Pacific from the Golden Gate to Sydney. Then in the distance threatening storm clouds appeared and rapidly drew near. They could see the rain curtains of the storm swiftly approaching over the billowing waters, and soon they were enveloped in a blind world of fiercely lashing rain and buffeting wind.

"We are in for a bad one," penciled Captain Howard Franklin, pilot and commander of the giant plane, The Golden Gate, to the other two fliers, his bosom friends and co-venturers. "We must try and skirt the storm area if we can, or rise above it."

Ten thousand feet up, and still they were in the clutches of the fiercest storm in their experience. In vain they battled to this side and that, up and down, ever seeking an escape from the battering wind and the swirling rain which now smote them with all the seeming force of a solid waterfall. In vain they sought to escape by descending almost within striking distance of the tempestuous waves of the angry ocean below, only to rise and struggle desperately up and away from the deadly danger. The storm area must have been of immense extent and height. Finally they gave themselves up to the merciless elements in a fierce endeavor to struggle ahead, trusting to the power of their great mechanical bird to pull them through. They were still more than a thousand miles from Australia.

For long anxious hours they battled on, soaked