Silver Wings (16 page)

All this wide sea of silver blue was before him, endless lovely spaces through which he must go far before he could come again. The exhilaration of flying was in his veins—the feel of the controls, his power over the engine, his ability to do this thing he had set out to do, his confidence in himself and his plane—all were a part of the moment as he realized that the race was really on and that by morning, the world would be standing in wonder, watching to see if he could accomplish it.

Yet there was something greater than all this, a feeling of sweet awe, that now, come what might, he was safe. If he met God again out there in the silver-blue, he would not be afraid. Whatever happened he was right with God. He might not understand it all, but he believed, and he stood in a new relation to God. Even if he fell, he was in God’s hands and all would be well.

In his heart, too, nestled a sweet and pleasant thought. A little blue-eyed girl, back several hundred miles, was praying for him. Her voice still lingered in his ears, her voice with her tears in it, as she promised. He was just as sure she would remember as he was sure he was God’s child. She was a stranger only yesterday, but now he stood in a new relationship to her, too. She was praying for him as he flew, and he had called her “darling.” He had not meant to, but he was glad he had. Darling! Darling! Darling! What a sweet word that was. Why had he never before noticed what a wonderful word that was?

The night wore on and the sea of crystal in which he sailed was clear as a bell. He never had seen the stars so bright. They seemed like nearby windows into another world. He watched them pale as the dawn drew near, and the sea of silver blue changed into coral and green and gold and orchid, as the sun rose and day began.

Well on in the morning he was reported to have passed over several towns in Ontario, and the papers rushed to set up extra editions and tell the news to the watching world. On and on he rushed, exulting in each mile accomplished. So much nearer the goal, and round to his home again.

Would she be there, waiting? Would she receive him as a friend after this? She would not be angry at the word darling he had called her. Her voice with the tears in it had not sounded angry. She was the one girl in all the world, the girl he had not dreamed there would be anywhere. Oh, if he had known before there was such a girl, how different he would have been!

But he was different now. He had been born again! How strange that he had been led to that plain little church, to just the thing he had been longing to find out! “Child of God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The drops of water on his brow, like the dew of the morning, he seemed to feel them now, and they were holy, precious!

At noon an observer sighted him as he passed over a small town not far from Fort Nelson. During the afternoon reports came in from several places, showing that he was going steadily on in the course that had been prescribed, though most of them said that while his engine could be heard, he was too high up for observation. At eight o’clock in the evening the radio broadcasted the fact that he had just been reported as passing over and signaling Fort Resolution.

The four men in New York sat back in their comfortable chairs with satisfied countenances, and the world held its breath for half a second and listened, exclaiming, and then went on again.

During the night Gareth’s engine was heard by prospectors along the Yukon, and early in the morning he climbed the air over the city of Dawson and dropped a handful of little flags down.

It had been the plan of the sponsors of this flight to have Sitka, Alaska, be the first objective, but Gareth had overruled them and chosen Nome as the point where he should refuel and stop for sleep before proceeding to Anadirsk on the coast of Siberia. He wanted to demonstrate the possibility of a nonstop flight between New York and Nome, which no one as yet had tried, and he wanted to cross to Siberia over the Bering Strait, taking the shortest possible course. The Arctic regions lured him and challenged his courage and prowess. He wanted to do something that nobody else had done.

As he sailed over Dawson he looked down wistfully. He was almost at his first goal, almost ready for the last hard lap of the journey. If he made it as he had planned he would soon be free to go back!

He was climbing over the Canadian Rockies now, snowcapped and mighty in their splendor. The night was clear, and almost like daylight. In fact, he was coming into the region of the short Arctic summer night, which meant almost constant daylight, and that was a help, of course. He was keeping a steady average now of about one hundred and twelve miles an hour.

But a new foe began to manifest itself, a deadly sleepiness that attacked him from time to time and threatened to overwhelm him. The little closed cabin in which he must ride seemed drugged with drowsiness, the stars seemed waltzing around in the heavens, his eyelids fell shut of themselves and had to be rubbed open again.

“Now, my Father, help me,” he prayed. “Don’t let this get me!” And again he found himself repeating, “Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!”

It was deadly, this sleep that was coming over him, like a featherbed that enveloped him and choked out all sense. Even the gleaming mountain peaks had faded from his vision. He might run into one and not know it until it was too late. He must do something about this.

He moved himself about as much as he could and tried to stir up a circulation; he adjusted his ventilators so that there was more air.

Presently he began to notice something strange about his compass. It was not working right—or was his own brain muddled with this deadly sleep? It seemed that his course had veered from the straight line his instinct taught him was right. Sometimes the nearness of the North Pole did play havoc with a compass needle. But still, if he could not trust his compass, what else was there to do? He certainly could not guide himself through these unknown wastes of air.

So he held on his way, hour after hour, pinching himself to keep awake, inventing all sorts of tortures to keep the great torture from drawing him into its deadly alluring arms.

And now by his watch the morning was well on its way, the second morning of his trip, and soon he ought to be nearing Nome. Had he crossed the Yukon River yet? He peered down, but he could not tell. The whole world seemed one mass of white peaks, or was that water far below?

It was his eyes, of course, that were full of sleep. His eyes that saw fields of snow rolling like billows. Just his eyes, blinded by the long strain and the whiteness and the sunlight. Or was that really water he was over—a wide sea! A horror froze in his throat. Had he missed his way? Was his compass really wrong? And was this Alaska Bay he was crossing, or had he come too far north and was this the Arctic Sea?

By his mileage now he ought to be at Nome, but there was no sign of human habitation. A glance at his compass showed it acting strangely, jumping around like a human thing that had lost its mind. Ah! This deadly cold and this smothering sleep! Why had he ever tried to do this fool thing?

It was about that time that he suddenly noticed a fine gray mist on his windshield. Was he coming into a storm? No, the barometer showed no change in weather conditions! Yet he could not see now where he was going. He looked about and the fine gray mist was all over on every side, the world outside being gradually obliterated. Was he going blind? He must be cool about this. He must not get excited. Even a blind man might be able to do something about what was happening. There was his wireless, too, and now he noticed he could still see everything inside his cabin with perfectly clear vision. Ah! The trouble was outside. He opened his windshield a little way and the bitter cold rushed in, and the clear bright light of day, and suddenly he knew what was the matter. His oil line had broken! That spelled disaster!

Was the oil going fast? Could he keep his plane in the air until he was over a safe landing place? It would be a risk of course, for if the oil was gone, the engine would stop.

He peered out through the open windshield, but there was nothing below him but that wide, heaving blue sea with the white, white mountains floating in it! Were they islands or icebergs? If he only knew where he was!

And now he saw as he looked outside how everything was covered with that gray sooty oil, thick and black on the windows. There was no hope that he could stay up in the air until he reached Nome, or—somewhere. His ship was doomed. His engine had stalled. He must come down, and come down mighty soon! But where?

Again he looked below him. There was nothing but that endless rolling blue-white sea, and the jagged towering icebergs sailing like complacent ships, slowly, so slowly; they seemed but restless mountains of crystal, just come alive a little. There was a space on the great one just before him that looked like a level spot. Yet he knew that icebergs were treacherous things. He knew they had wide crevasses and soft spots in them where they were about to split apart. An iceberg was no kind of a place to land! Yet there was no other option but the sea.

Slowly, cautiously, he dropped his plane, keeping to the very end that cool courage for which many a newspaper in the triumphant days past had commended him.

Like a sick bird the great ship dropped, the master keeping control in a graceful glide. He suddenly felt so small, and his plane with its mighty engine so helpless, there above that wide, heaving sea of sparkling ice.

It was happening to him, then, just as it had happened to hundreds of others! This was how they all had felt! He had come to the end, and there was no hope for him on this earth!

The papers tomorrow morning would say he was lost at sea! They would send out a few planes to search for him, but his body would be beneath those icy waters or wrecked on one of those jagged peaks! Then they would come back, and the papers would tell all his feats, and all the flags would be at half mast for a few days, and then he would be forgotten. But they would not tell how he was a child of God and had been saved and would live forever. They did not know he was going to live forever with God.

But God was here, and he was the child of God now.

“Oh, God!” He spoke aloud, with his hand firmly on the controls of the machine and his eyes straight ahead as he swooped low over the white forbidding field, just as if God were down there waiting for him, showing him where to guide his machine. “God, I am Your child, and I’m trusting You!”

Would the little girl remember after the others had forgotten? Would they find the little book floating on the water perhaps, and send it back to her? Would she know? He was glad he had called her darling! It would not matter now, and she would not mind after this. Oh, death made a great difference in things!

He must be almost down now. Yes— Ah! A grinding! Steady! He must not lose control. If this was an iceberg, it would be rough. There might be sharp walls ahead of his ship! There! “God! Are You there?”

The light went out with a crash, and he lay in darkness and pain, and then even that was obliterated.

“God! Child of God! Name of the Father, name of the Son—”

E
xcitement in the Whitney mansion ran high Monday morning when the morning paper was read. Ned rushed to turn on the radio at once to make sure he did not miss an announcement concerning his other cousin who was also a hero in his eyes, though not quite so companionable a pal heretofore as Cousin John.

“It’s fool nonsense!” said the master of the house, attacking his grapefruit fiercely. “What’s it all for anyway? Just so some corporation or other can carry gold from Nome to New York in a few hours. Well, what’s Siberia got to do with it all?”

“Probably they expect us all to migrate there and settle,” suggested Fred, who always had some solution of any question propounded.

“I certainly would like to have gone with him!” said Diana wistfully, watching under her lashes to see if John Dunleith heard her.

“I expect that’s why he went off without telling us,” said Caroline discontentedly. “He never did want girls along when he was doing anything interesting.”

“Who would want a girl along on a trip like that?” said Mr. Whitney. “In my opinion a woman who goes on a trip like that demeans herself. She simply does it to get before the eyes of the world, and if she gets wrecked she deserves all she gets!”

“Oh, mercy! Daddy! How mid-Victorian!” cried Caroline.

“I was just thinking of buying a plane myself and taking up flying,” said Diana sweetly, archly, looking at her host.

“I still think so!” declared the host without smiling, and they all shrieked together.

Amory, summoned to the dining room to do an errand for Mrs. Whitney, turned away and looked out of the window. It seemed a desecration to hear them carrying on this way when one who was recently of their number was sailing the skies alone.

The paper lay on the floor, and as she stood there, apparently waiting for Mrs. Whitney to write out a list of the people she wanted called on the telephone, she could read it from where she stood. In great letters across the page she saw:

TED KINGSLEY FLIES TO SIBERIA

Hopping off at midnight, the cheerful pilot makes Ontario before daybreak!

She read it with an inward shudder. Somehow it seemed so tragic to have them talk of it in this light way, as if he were playing a few holes of golf, or trying to win a set of tennis.

He did not seem the same person as the Gareth who had bade her good-bye last night over the telephone.

As quickly as she could she got away from the giddy company and from that dreadful newspaper; though later in the day, when she had opportunity, she walked down to the village and bought up all the papers she could find. It seemed she must know every word they said about him, even though it made her unhappy to read them.

After she had read them all she put them away carefully out of sight. No one must suspect that she had any interest in the young man!

But later, Christine came up on an errand and gave the latest news about the flyer, which had come in on the radio, and after she had gone, Amory went to the window and looked out and into the distance, as if by straining her eyes she could see to that far skyline where he flew, the man who had dared to call her darling! And ever she kept praying in her heart for his safety.