"Then that must be Virginia off there to the west!" he cried, again s.n.a.t.c.hing up the gla.s.ses for another earnest look.
Tom watched him out of the corner of his eye. Well did he know that as Jack feasted his gaze upon the far distant land in imagination he was seeing that dearly loved home, with the friends who were so precious to him, and in fancy receiving their warm greetings.
They continued on for some little time. Tom felt pretty confident that he was correct, though he would be glad to have some confirmation of his figuring.
"The fog is thinning some!" he finally stated, "and I think we"d better seek a lower level."
"Might as well," added Beverly, approving of the idea instantly.
"Yes," added Jack, "when the time comes to fly landward we"ll want to be down far enough to see where we"re going. We needn"t be afraid any longer of making a sensation, because seaplanes must be cruising over these waters nearly every day, coming from the station near Fortress Monroe at Hampton Roads."
Accordingly it was not long before they were skirting the upper reaches of the diminishing fog bank, being about a thousand feet or so above the sea itself. Now and then slight rifts appeared in the disappearing mist, and at such intervals it was possible for them to catch fleeting glimpses of the Atlantic, whose wide expanse they had successfully spanned, an event that would make history, if only it could ever be publicly known.
Jack could no longer see the low sh.o.r.e, much to his distress; but then he knew positively it was there, and when the time came to change their course directly into the west a brief flight would carry them over the land.
It really mattered little to him where they made their landing, since he would be able to find a way of reaching Bridgeton within a few hours. He consulted his little wrist watch again and again.
Tom was more than a little amused to see Jack even clap it close to his ear. He knew the reason of his doing this, for time was crawling on so slowly in the estimation of the impatient one that he even suspected the faithful little watch had ceased to go, though its steady ticking must have speedily a.s.sured him such could not possibly be the case.
"Listen!" Lieutenant Beverly suddenly called out.
A strange weird sound came faintly to their ears. Even above all the noise of their working engine they could make it out. To any one who came from the interior of the country it might have seemed a bewildering sound, and have called up strange fancies connected with marine monsters that were said to have once inhabited these waters near the Gulf Stream.
But the trio of voyagers had lived too long near the coast not to recognize a fog-siren when they heard its strident call.
Jack in particular was exultant.
"Tell me, is that the anch.o.r.ed light-ship"s siren, Tom, do you think?" he demanded, with considerable excitement.
The pilot nodded his head, and with a finger pointed to a dot on the chart to indicate that it could be nothing else.
"I presume, Tom," Jack went on to say, "you came down when you did partly to catch that sound as we came near the shoals where the lightship stands guard day and night the whole year through."
"Well, I had that in mind," came the answer, "for, as I said before, while feeling pretty sure of my bearings I thought I"d like to have them verified. And now you can see I wasn"t much out of the way."
"You"ve done splendidly, Tom," said Beverly, clapping the other heartily on the back. "We"ve all carried ourselves like true Americans through this whole affair; and it"ll afford us considerable satisfaction when we look back on the wonderful trip."
"And now, Tom, hadn"t we better turn toward the sh.o.r.e?" asked Jack.
"Just as soon as we get over the lightship I will know how to steer, Jack. Keep cool, and before long you"ll be looking down on our beloved Virginia once again."
"You make me mighty happy when you say that, Tom. Many times I"ve wondered if I"d ever see it again, we"ve been overseas so long and in so many perils while doing our duty. How fine it"ll be to stand once more on the soil where both of us were born, and know we"ve done a pretty big thing in crossing the Atlantic by the new air route!"
They fell silent again after that, but not for long. Louder and clearer came the frequent long-drawn wails of the steam fog-horn, until finally it seemed evident they were almost exactly above the lightship that, as Tom knew, was anch.o.r.ed on the shoals to warn mariners of their danger by means of a far-reaching lamp and the powerful siren"s hoa.r.s.e voice.
"Now we"ll strike in for the land!" called out Tom, his announcement causing Jack to thrill with delight, while Beverly too showed his pleasure in broad smiles.
Soon afterwards they were speeding due west, with Jack gluing his eyes to his gla.s.ses and reporting every few minutes fresh signs of vast importance. Virginia soon lay beneath them, to announce that they had completed their wonderful flight across the Atlantic.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE END OF THE FLIGHT
No longer did the fog enfold them in its damp grasp. After leaving the immediate coast behind them the last trace of it disappeared.
Jack refused to take his entranced eyes from the binoculars for a single minute. He felt a hundred-fold repaid for all the perils encountered during the memorable flight from the sh.o.r.e of France, during which they had spanned the vast area of the Atlantic, and were now sailing peacefully along above the home soil.
Lieutenant Beverly made an announcement just then that startled them.
"We must look for a place to drop down without any further loss of time!"
he called out to Tom, who was still serving as pilot.
"But it would be mighty fine," Jack observed wistfully, "if only we might keep going on until we got a few miles out of Bridgeton. I know every rod of territory for miles around and could point out a dandy level field to make our landing in. We"d be able to descend without observation, too, I really believe."
"That"d surely be nice, Jack," Beverly told him, "and I wish we could accommodate you. But the fact is we"re about out of gas! I noted this a short time ago, but said nothing, because it would do no good to throw a scare into you both. Besides, Tom had already headed direct for the land at the time."
"How lucky that didn"t happen when we were a hundred miles out at sea!"
Tom exclaimed, his first thought being one of satisfaction, rather than useless complaint. This was characteristic of Tom, always seeing the bright side of things, no matter how gloomy they appeared to others.
"Then I"d better be looking for a landing-place," Jack quickly remarked, getting over his little disappointment.
"And the sooner we duck the better," Beverly admitted. "If the motors go back on us we"ll be in a bad fix; and volplaning to the ground isn"t always as easy as it"s pictured, especially when you"ve no choice of a landing."
"After all, it does not matter so very much," Jack concluded. "Surely once we succeed in gaining a footing we can discover a means for getting to our goal without much loss of time."
He bent his energies toward looking for what would seem to be a promising open spot, where there would not be apt to be any pitfalls or traps waiting to wreck their plane, and possibly endanger their lives.
"Scrub woods all below us, Tom!" he announced.
"But there must be openings here and there," the pilot told him. "If only the field seems long enough to admit of our coming to a stop, we"d better take chances."
"Nothing yet, sorry to say," called out Jack.
"Suppose you drop lower, Tom," suggested Beverly. "If we skirt the tops of the taller trees we"ll be better able to see without depending on the gla.s.ses. All three of us can be on the lookout at the same time."
Tom considered that a good idea and he lost no time in carrying it out.
It was easier now to take particular note of the ground; but they pa.s.sed over mile after mile of the scrub without discovering what they most earnestly sought.
"Things are getting down to a fine point, Tom," warned Beverly. "Our gas is on its last legs, and any minute now we"ll find ourselves without motive power."
"It must change soon," the pilot told them. "This scrub forest has got to give way to rising ground and open s.p.a.ces."
"But if it doesn"t, what then?" asked Jack.