Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/85

 to the skin and miserable from the piercing cold. The Golden Gate was pounded and twisted and often turned away from its course. They were flying totally blind through a swirling darkness, split by frightful flashes of lightning. At times the combined strength of Captain Franklin and his co-pilot and navigator, Ray Dunlap, was hardly equal to holding the wheel, the great plane all but slipping from their control. And then the earthinductor compass went out of action, with only the steering compasses to guide them, adding greatly to their difficulties.

"Will the storm never cease!" spoke Captain Franklin aloud, the fierce wind tearing the words from his teeth without a sound.

Suddenly to their frightened senses came an ominous sound. One of the motors coughed and spluttered, picked up again reassuringly, and then went dead altogether.

"Sound the 'S.O.S' Dick," signalled the commander grimly to Williams the radio operator.

"Generator out of commission," he replied. "Cannot raise a sound."

With blanched faces they tore on at a greatly reduced speed, their two remaining motors still going, although it became increasingly difficult to maintain altitude, what with the vast downpour and raking wind. The drift indicator showed that they were being blown far out of their course.

Anxiously they peered through the swirling gloom for a possible sign of land, hoping against hope. They were now completely lost and far, far from any of the known island of the South Pacific.

And then another dread sound occurred—the starboard motor, too, began to miss.

"Looks like taps for us," communicated Dunlap, "unless we can land somewhere real soon."

 

A number of times the dark promontories and cliffs of the storm fooled them; they imagined they saw real land. The storm was gradually diminishing, and to their great joy there appeared the dark shape of land not far away—or was it land? The stuttering motor was threatening to die out at any moment.

The fury of the storm had by now abated, and they could make out the ghostly outlines of some large island, whose wooded shores stretched away to a great distance. They had lost their direction entirely and were at a loss to make out their whereabouts; but land they must regardless, for at any moment they were in danger of a watery grave in the storm-tossed waters beneath them.

Reaching the island they flew over an unbroken forest for many miles, looking for a safe place to land. Spying a break m the green forest top, Captain Franklin headed for it and effected a landing on a level sandy beach alongside a narrow river.

HEW, that was a narrow escape!" he exclaimed. "Praise God," agreed Dick Williams, although he could scarcely hear what the other said. "That was as near to 'Davey Jones' Locker' as ever I care to be."

Shortly after, the hurricane, which had been rapidly diminishing, came to an end, and they were able to make out their immediate surroundings. They found themselves on a rock-strewn level of a river valley. On one side, to their right, the narrow river, clear and deep, moved swiftly north, a thick, and impenetrable jungle on its far side reaching clear down to the low banks. On the other side, to their left, about a hundred feet or more from the river's edge, high bluffs rose precipitously, hiding the landscape beyond behind their frowning crests, although the edge of a thick forest growth was visible on top.

The narrow, sandy valley formed between the