CHAPTER II

Fighting the Gale

“They’ll never get through alive!”

Was Bill Twombley’s gruesome prophecy to be justified?

As a matter of fact, Ted Scott had the same conviction. He knew the odds
were heavily against him. But his blood was up, and he never regretted
his decision for an instant.

He glanced at the man beside him. The doctor’s face was pale, but his
eyes did not waver nor his lips tremble. The thought came to Ted that,
if he forfeited his life in this wild venture, he would at least die in
good company.

The doctor’s lips moved. He was saying something, but he could not be
heard above the roar of the motor.

Ted shook his head to indicate that conversation was impossible, and
then devoted all his thought to the guidance of his machine.

If the wind had been a following one, Ted could simply have scudded
before it and tried to keep on an even keel. But it seemed to come from
all quarters of the compass, and from time to time the _Hapworth_ was
whirled about in it like a dancing dervish.

Ted dived and rose again, trying to find some stratum of air that was
less furiously agitated. But whether he flew at a height of two thousand
or ten thousand feet seemed to make no difference. The gale that day was
equally fierce at all altitudes.

Ted had breasted many a gale, but never any one like this. At every
moment he feared to hear some sound of tearing, to see some support give
way in the unbridled fury of the elements.

And now, to make it worse, the snow was falling heavily. It formed an
impenetrable veil before his eyes.

A veil! Was it perhaps a shroud? Was Bill’s prophecy to be fulfilled?

He could not see twenty feet ahead of him. He might as well have been
blind. He had to depend entirely upon his instruments.

And now even they were acting strangely. His altimeter seemed to be out
of order. He noted that when he dived and when he soared the indicator
scarcely moved.

Had he been traveling over level country, this would not so much have
mattered, though even then he would have been in peril from the tops of
trees.

But he was in a mountainous country, where sometimes the crags rose to a
height of ten thousand feet. Should he strike one of these, death would
come on the instant.

Even as this thought appalled him, a gust of the gale drove a rift
through the snow, and in that vista he saw before him a black, savage
mass of rock toward which he was driving with twice the speed of an
express train!

While Ted is struggling desperately at his controls, it may be well, for
the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this
series, to tell who Ted was and what had been his adventures up to the
time this story opens.

Ted Scott’s knowledge of his origin, of his parents, was of the
slightest. His first conscious memory went back to the time when he
found himself in the care of James and Miranda Wilson, a worthy couple
whose hearts had been touched by the plight of the little waif and who
had taken him into their household.

They treated him kindly and sent him to school. But when he was ten
years old the Wilsons died, within a few months of each other, leaving
no property of any account. But again Ted found friends, this time Eben
and Charity Browning, who were themselves childless and welcomed the
forlorn little fellow into their hearts and home. He became as dear to
them as though he had been their own, and he on his part returned their
devotion with the same affection he would have rendered to his own
parents.

Eben Browning kept a hotel, the Bromville House, in the town of the same
name. At one time, it had been the leading place of its kind in the
township. Eben, shrewd, kindly, humorous, with a fund of homely
anecdote, had been a great favorite with the traveling men who put up at
his hotel. He had a large clientage also among fisherman who came to
indulge their favorite sport in the waters of the Rappock River, famous
for its trout.

But changes came in the town. The Devally-Hipson Aero Corporation
established there a mammoth plant for the manufacture of airplanes. This
provided employment for an army of workmen, and Bromville blossomed out
as a thriving city.

With its growth came more hotels, up-to-date establishments with which
the old Bromville House, now grown shabby, could not compete. From
affectionate habit and old times’ sake, a certain portion of Eben’s
clientage, especially the fishermen, still clung to the old place. But
the traveling men gradually took up their quarters in the newer
hostelries for their own greater comfort and for the prestige of their
firms.

The greatest blow came to Eben’s tottering fortunes when the Hotel
Excelsior was erected. It was a luxurious, palatial structure,
sumptuously furnished, that would have graced a metropolitan city. It
had broad grounds exquisitely laid out, marble verandas, a band pavilion
and all the other attributes of a great caravansary. In connection with
the hotel was a superb golf course that drew golfers to compete in
tournaments from all parts of the country.

Against the proprietor of the Hotel Excelsior, Brewster Gale, Eben had a
special grievance. He, Eben Browning, had once owned all the land on
which the Hotel Excelsior now stood, as well as that on which the golf
links had been laid out. Gale, a heavy-jowled, unscrupulous man who had
amassed a fortune by ways that could not stand inspection but had not
yet landed him in jail, secured the property from Eben.

The deal, which seemed straightforward, called for a stated price that
would have given the latter a comfortable fortune. But, apart from the
few hundred dollars paid down to seal the contract, Eben Browning had
never received a cent of the promised purchase price. By the aid of
conscienceless lawyers and a bewildering amount of legal hocus
pocus—reorganizations, holding companies and the like—Eben had been
frozen out and Gale was riding on the crest of the wave with what seemed
to be a clear title to the property.

The old man had raved and protested, but he had no money to fight Gale
in a contest that might be drawn out for years. Bewildered and hopeless,
he had practically given up the struggle and devoted himself to trying
to make a living out of his hotel. But he was working against odds, and
he was tormented by the fear of bankruptcy and dependence in his old
age.

Ted Scott, as he grew older, did all he could to help about the place,
painting and repairing, but its fortunes steadily dwindled. When the
Aero Plant was established, Ted secured a job there, and his industry
and skill and a special aptitude for mechanics advanced him rapidly
until he was getting good wages. Almost all of this he turned in each
week to the old folks to keep the wolf from the door.

His work among airplanes, of which he soon mastered every feature,
quickened in him a desire he had long cherished to fly. The
determination that he would learn to be an aviator came to a head one
day when a flying circus came to town. Ted was thrilled by the daring
and skill of the airmen, and from that time on his vocation was fixed in
his mind.

At this juncture he made two warm friends who were able to advance his
ambitions. One was Paul Monet, a Frenchman by birth, but for a long time
resident in America, whose life Ted had saved on the day of the flying
circus by dragging him out of the way of an airplane that was making a
landing. The other was Walter Hapworth, a wealthy young business man and
golf expert, who had visited the works of the Aero Corporation and had
been amazed by Ted’s familiarity with everything pertaining to planes.

These two men learned of the lad’s longing to be an aviator and offered
to supply money enough to pay for his course in the flying school. Ted
accepted, on condition that the money should be only a loan to be repaid
later. He went to the school and, during a course that involved many
thrilling adventures, became one of its most proficient pupils.

Then he entered the air mail service, his route being a night one
between St. Louis and Chicago. His daring, his quick thinking, and his
unfailing courage in an emergency soon gained him a reputation.

The papers about that time were rife with details of the offer of a
twenty-five thousand dollar prize to the airman who should first make a
non-stop flight between New York and Paris. Several men of international
reputation had already entered for the prize, and excitement was at
fever heat.

Ted Scott longed to enter the competition, but as that would involve the
expenditure of many thousands of dollars for a plane and expenses, it
seemed impracticable. Mr. Hapworth, stopping off on a journey from the
Pacific Coast, learned of Ted’s desires and offered to build him a plane
and provide the other necessary funds.

Ted accepted and went to San Francisco, and there, in an airplane
factory in which Mr. Hapworth had a controlling interest, supervised the
building of a monoplane, which he named after his benefactor. When it
was ready, he jumped into the cockpit and headed for New York, from
which city, after he had completed all preparations, he planned to take
off for Paris.

How in the haze of a rainy morning Ted mounted into the skies for his
flight to Europe—the fog and sleet and storm with which he battled over
the surging wastes of the Atlantic—the final swooping down of the lone
eagle on Paris—the tremendous ovations that greeted him there and which
reached their climax on his return to his native country where he was
enshrined as a national idol—all is told in the first volume of this
series, entitled: “Over the Ocean to Paris; or, Ted Scott’s Daring
Long-Distance Flight.”

After the great receptions in Washington and New York, Ted returned to
Bromville, where the old home town went wild over him. There he
consulted with Mr. Hapworth and Mr. Monet about his future course.

There were other matters, too, in which his interests were linked with
those of these trusted friends. They had invested heavily in the golf
course project and had reason to believe that Brewster Gale, the
treasurer of the company that financed the course, was indulging in
fraudulent practices. Their suspicions were increased when Ted told them
of how Gale had cheated Eben Browning out of his property. Mr. Hapworth
immediately ordered his own lawyers, who were already working on the
golf course matter, to search into the intricacies of the Browning case.

They reported that Gale’s transactions with Eben Browning had been
tainted with perjury and that they only needed a certain witness and a
couple of missing documents to make an iron-clad case against him.

Ted had incurred Gale’s deadly enmity, and the two sons of the rascally
father, Gregory and Duckworth—Greg and Duck for short—took up the
paternal quarrel.

On a tour at the head of a flying circus for the benefit of the
Bromville hospital, Ted came across an old Bromville resident, who gave
him a clue to the missing witness in the Gale case. It was rather
indefinite, pointing simply to Arkansas as the present residence of the
man wanted, but it narrowed the field of search, which had hitherto
embraced all the South.

At that time the Mississippi was on a rampage and the worst flood in
history was devastating the valley. Ted volunteered as an aviator in the
Red Cross and went South, where he chanced to be assigned to the
Arkansas district.

What valor he displayed in that fight with the mad waters—the daring
rescues he made at the risk of his life—the thrilling adventures that
came to him in the course of his task—how he flew to the aid of two
aviators in a burning plane high in the skies—how he came across Major
Claiborne, the missing witness—all is told in the preceding volume of
this series, entitled: “Rescued in the Clouds; or, Ted Scott, Hero of
the Air.”

Following his return from the flooded district, Ted’s thoughts turned to
his first love, the air mail service. He saw tremendous possibilities in
this and also in the matter of commercial transportation that, he
thought, was about ripe for an enormous development. In order to learn
at first hand and by practical experience all that was contained in
this, he took up the work on the most dangerous section of the whole
system—that which involved flight over the Rocky Mountains. The love of
adventure was in his blood, but, combined with this, was the passion to
perfect himself in his chosen calling. A man who could master the
Rockies could well be called a finished aviator.

Now to return to Ted Scott as he peered with strained eyes through the
snow at the black mass of rock toward which his plane was driving.

He saw in an instant that he could not rise high enough to clear that
towering peak in time and that, if he struck it, he, his passenger, and
the plane would be smashed to bits.

He glanced to right and left.

At the left the rock extended as far as he could see. No hope there!

But at the right he discerned an opening where the peak made a sudden
descent. It was fearfully narrow, for, just beyond, another crag
upreared itself.

Could he make the passage? He _must_ make it!

With an unuttered prayer he turned the plane to the right.

Like an arrow it shot through the narrow gorge, one end of the wing
barely grazing the edge of the cliff.

There was an involuntary gasp on the part of the doctor, but beyond that
he gave no sign.

Rigid as a statue, Ted sat at the controls, a touch here and a touch
there guiding the plane through the narrow defile, until, where it
widened for an instant, he turned the nose upward and rose into the
higher spaces.

Up and up he continued soaring until he knew that he was clear of the
mountain top. Then for an instant he relaxed.

It had been a terrific test of nerves and skill, but he had conquered.
But the strain had been so terrific that, despite the bitter cold, he
was drenched with perspiration.

A hundred times that passage might have been tried, and ninety-nine
times it would have ended in disaster. His had been the hundredth time.

He wondered whether dear old Charity Browning at home had been praying
for him at that moment. He believed she had.

But he had little time to dwell on what was past. The future was the
problem. Death had been baffled once, but it was still hovering over
him, with claws extended.

The snow storm had now become a blizzard. Sleet was mingled with the
snow and was driven against the windows of the cockpit with a force that
threatened to break the glass.

Where was he? He did not know.

He had tried to keep account of his instruments, but the _Hapworth_ had
been driven so many times out of its course, had retreated and advanced,
had gone miles to the right, other miles to the left in that cyclonic
gale that accuracy was impossible.

He could only strike an average and make an estimate.

In fair weather, he would have had no difficulty in discarding his
instruments altogether, for all the landmarks below were familiar to him
and would have guided him infallibly to his destination. But now every
well-known object was blotted out by the blinding snow.

He knew, however, by the best information he could gather from the dial
plate in front of him, combined with the airman’s sure knowledge of
distances, that he was somewhere near his goal.

But even when he reached that goal, there would be another problem to be
solved.

How and where could he make a landing?

He could not see the ground, and if he descended lower in the attempt to
descry it, he might at any instant smash into trees. A curious sound
made him tap his gasoline tank. His heart seemed to turn over in his
body.

_The tank was almost empty._