"So far so good!" Frank exclaimed, noting that their quarry was not outdistancing them. The boys waved happily to Weber, who responded with a wide grin. Nearly half an hour had pa.s.sed when they noticed a build-up of haze ahead. It seemed to thicken as they drew closer. Soon the antique craft was skirting an ocean of milky-white mist which obscured the country-side below.
"What a cloud!" Joe shouted.
"And we"ll head right into it on our present course!" Frank observed.
Weber signalled that he would try flying above it. By now Marr"s plane was also climbing. To the Hardys"
dismay, their quarry vanished behind a screen of whiteness.
Weber signalled that he was going to turn back. But as he banked the biplane, it suddenly plunged into a misty void!
CHAPTER XVI.
Bail Out WEBER struggled to keep the aircraft under control in the fog. He shifted his attention to the turn-and-bank indicator mounted on the instrument panel. What the dial showed would help prevent the pilot from rolling into an uncontrollable spiral.
Then, suddenly, the plane broke out into a cavity of clear air. The boys spotted the other aircraft and saw that it had altered its course. It was now heading south. Weber immediately banked and took the same direction, hoping to close the gap and come in on the tail of the other plane.
It was then that the Hardys realized the extent of the fog bank. Already obscuring a great area of the coast, it stretched far out to sea. Ahead they saw their quarry flying directly towards a looming wall of thick mist.
Weber altered course again and, headed north-west in an effort to skirt the edge of the tog bank. But the mist built up rapidly in swirling clouds.
"I guess if we hope to keep the other plane in sight, we can"t go too far to the west,"" Frank observed.
Weber began to climb, hoping to get above the fog. But as he turned north to meet the advancing cloud, his craft was enveloped in mist before he could gain alt.i.tude. Marr"s plane had vanished.
"The other ship is equipped to fly on instruments!" Weber shouted. "We"re not!"
Their pilot held to a straight course and increased his speed, hoping to run through the fog and pick up the other plane when visibility improved. The great bank of mist evidently extended over a greater area than he had first supposed.
Minutes ticked by and still the opaque greyness persisted. Frank and Joe turned to watch the pilot.
Weber was peering at the instrument panel.
"At least we"re flying straight and level," he announced.
Frank and Joe tried to remain calm but inwardly they were worried Their craft might ram another plane at any moment!
Weber continued on into the limitless white wall. Not a glimpse of blue sky. Not a patch of earth to be seen.
"I guess we"ve lost Marr for sure," Joe remarked.
"Yes," Frank agreed. His voice showed his disappointment.
Suddenly the roar of the engine stopped. The only sound was the hum of the rigging. The nose of the plane dropped sharply and the craft went into a dive.
"The engine"s stopped!" Joe yelled.
The pilot waved at them in an encouraging gesture. He had thrust the stick far forward and the plane was plunging through the fog at terrific speed.
On and on it went. The boys were alarmed. They knew engine trouble had developed and a forced landing in the fog would be perilous. But there must still be some hope; otherwise their pilot would have signalled to abandon ship.
The rush of air took their breath away. Then, as abruptly as it had ceased, the roar of the engine broke out again.
"Boy, what a welcome sound!" Joe exclaimed.
Weber eased the stick back slowly and the plane gradually recovered from the dive. It flattened out and began to climb again. Frank took a deep breath. Joe grinned.
But their relief was short-lived. Again the engine began to act up. It spluttered, balked, misfired, and picked up again. No longer was it throbbing with its previous regularity.
The boys looked back at the pilot"s anxious face. They all knew a blind landing could be disastrous! For a moment the Hardys stiffened as the engine died, then coughed once more.
"Carburettor ice, I"ll bet," Frank said to himself.
The plane they had been pursuing was forgotten. Their whole concern now was safety - to escape the grey blanket. If only they could sight ground to attempt a forced landing!
Frank felt for the harness of his parachute. "We may have to jump," he thought, not relishing the prospect. To leap from a crippled plane, with fog blanketing the earth below, was an experience he could do without.
Joe was alarmed too. "If only the fog would lift!"
The pilot was desperately trying to revive the engine"s old steady clamour. But it was useless.
The engine stopped again. The nose of the machine dropped and the plane repeated a long, swift dive. It straightened out, banked, then dived again at screaming speed.
Coming out of the second dive, the nose rose abruptly. They all waited for the rea.s.suring catch of the engine but it remained mute.
The speed gained in the dive steadily decreased as the craft soared upwards in a steep climb. Then it fell off on one wing and went into a descending spiral.
"I have a feeling we"re going in circles!" Joe shouted to his brother. "I think Weber is becoming disoriented."
"We"re sunk!" Weber yelled at the boys. "You"ll have to take to the chutes!"
"Jump?" Joe shouted.
The man nodded. "The engine is done for. Choked up. I don"t dare try a landing in this log. We"ll crack up for sure. Hurry! I"ll keep her under control as long as I can. Crawl out on the wing, watch for my signal, then jump clear! Count ten, then yank the rip cord!"
The boys scrambled out on the swaying wing in dead silence as the plane coasted through the grey mist.
"Jump clear!" Frank reminded his brother.
"It"s not the jumping that worries me," said Joe. "It"s the landing."
The boys knew that they had no control over their direction and had no idea of what lay beneath. They might be plunging directly towards a lake or into a city street!
Out on the wing Frank and Joe clung for a moment, their eyes on the pilot. Weber raised his hand, then brought it down sharply.
"Jump!"
Since the parachutes could easily become entangled if the boys jumped together, Frank went first. He leaped away from the swaying plane and plummeted through the fog. Then Joe followed suit.
Twisting and turning through the air, the boys plunged towards the earth. Desperately Frank groped for the ripcord. It eluded his grasp. Sudden panic gripped him.
He was falling towards the earth at terrific speed and could not find the parachute"s Dee ring!
Every second was precious. He knew that even if he found the ring, it would be a few moments before the parachute opened. By then he might already have reached an alt.i.tude too low to permit the chute to billow out in time!
His groping hand found the ring and he tugged. Nothing happened. He was still tumbling through the clouds of mist!
About to give up hope, Frank heard a crackling sound above him. There was a sudden jerk as though a gigantic hand had grabbed him and he found himself floating gently through s.p.a.ce.
Through the wreaths of mist he glimpsed another object. It was a parachute similar to his own, dropping slowly through the fog. Joe, at least, was safe.
But what of the pilot and the crippled plane? Where were they?
CHAPTER XVII.
The Trapped Pilot FEAR gripping them, the Hardys drifted down silently through the fog. The only sound was an occasional flapping of the canopies looming above their heads.
"The ground can"t be too far below!" Frank thought. "What kind of terrain? Sharp rocks? Trees? Open water?"
He and Joe heard a m.u.f.fled explosion some distance away.
"Weber"s biplane must have crashed!" Joe concluded. "Hope he bailed out in time."
Suddenly the milky void vanished. The Hardys blinked in relief. They were less than a hundred feet above a farmland area.
They settled down in a ploughed field a short distance from each other. Frank tumbled across the soft ground a couple of times, then hauled in a section of shroud lines to spill the air from the canopy of his chute.
"You all right?" he shouted to Joe, throwing off his harness and running towards him.
"I"m okay! That was wild! But I wouldn"t want to do it again under the same conditions!"
Frank pointed to a plume of smoke rising behind a hill about half a mile away.
"That must be the explosion!" he yelled. "Let"s see if it"s Weber"s plane."
They raced towards the spot. In a few minutes they came to a charred, twisted ma.s.s of wreckage. A pool of oil still burned.
"At least Weber wasn"t in the wreak," said Joe. "But where is he?"
At that instant the pilot called out to them. "Hey, fellows!" he shouted. "Give me a hand!"
The voice seemed to come from a small clump of trees located about five hundred feet away. When the boys reached it, they saw Weber dangling in his harness high among some branches.
"Are you hurt?" Joe asked with concern.
"No - only my pride," the pilot answered. "I"m supposed to be an expert at handling a parachute. And where do I land and get trapped? In the only grove of trees within a mile!"
"You"re too far above the ground to try dropping free," Frank warned. "We"d better get help."
People from the surrounding farms who had seen the smoke began to arrive at the scene. When the boys asked for some rope, one of the farmers rushed off. He returned in a few minutes with a coil of one-inch hemp.
Joe took it and began shinning up the tree in which Weber"s chute was entangled. Everyone watched the rescue as he edged out along a branch directly above the pilot and tied one end of the rope to it.
Seconds later they both were sliding to the ground.
The farmer on whose property they had landed stepped up. "My name is Hank Olsen," he said. "Was anybody injured?"
"No," Frank replied. "Sorry about the plane coming down on your land."
"That"s all right. I haven"t done any planting in that section yet," the farmer explained.
Weber spoke up. "I"d like to telephone a report of the crash."
"You can use the phone at my house," Olsen offered. "I"ll drive you there. My pickup truck is just on the other side of the hill."
When they arrived at the farmhouse, the pilot called the control tower at Bayport field to report the accident. Frank phoned Mrs Hardy to let her know where he and Joe were, and then got in touch with Chet Morton for a ride home.
"What!" Chet exclaimed in disbelief when he heard about the Hardys" adventure. "Say that again."
"I said we had to bail out of Weber"s biplane," Frank declared.
"Aw, come on," his chum muttered, unbelieving.
"It"s true," Frank replied. "We need a ride home. Do you think your jalopy would hang together long enough for you to pick us up?"
"Hang together?" Chet retorted. "That"s no way to talk about one of the finest pieces of machinery going.
Where are you?"
Frank asked the farmer for their exact location. Olsen unfolded a road map and pointed to a spot about ninety miles north-east of Bayport. Frank traced the route with his finger and relayed instructions to his friend.
"Okay! I"m on my way!" Chet answered.
Nearly three hours pa.s.sed before the Hardys spotted their chum"s yellow jalopy bouncing along the narrow road leading to Olsen"s house. Weber and the boys thanked the farmer and his wife for their hospitality, then started for Bayport.
As they rode along, the Hardys and Weber discussed their pursuit of Marr"s plane. "I wonder if he ran into any trouble," Joe mused.