THE THUNDERHEAD
Dorothy telephoned the Walters next morning, to learn from a maid that
Terry was still missing, and that Mr. Walters was down in the village,
putting the matter in the hands of the police.
“May I speak to Mrs. Walters?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not, miss. Mrs. Walters has been up all night. Doctor Brown
has given her a sleeping powder and issued orders that she is not to be
disturbed.”
“If there is anything that I can do,” said Dorothy, “telephone me.”
“Thank you, miss. I’ll tell Mr. Walters when he comes home.”
Dorothy rang off and went about her household duties with a heavy heart.
Later on she motored to the village to do her marketing, and upon her
return found that her father had telephoned. She immediately called up
the New Canaan Bank, of which he was president.
“Any news, Daddy?” she inquired anxiously, as soon as she was put
through to him.
“That you, Dorothy?” she heard him say. “Yes—Terry’s car has been
found.”
“_Where_, Daddy?”
“On a wood road in the hills back of the Norwalk reservoir. The car was
empty. A farmer driving through there found it early this morning and
phoned the license number to the police.”
“But what in the world could Terry have been doing way over there? I
know that road. It’s no more than a bridle path—the reservoir is three
or four miles beyond Silvermine.”
“My opinion is that Terry was never anywhere near the place,” explained
her father. “He was undoubtedly held up, removed to another car and his
own run over to the spot where it was found.”
“No sign of him, I suppose?”
“No. I’ve talked with Walters. The poor man is nearly off his head with
worry. We’re getting up searching parties to cooperate with the police.
I’ll see you at dinner tonight. It will be impossible for me to get home
at noon.”
“I’ll hope to have some news for you, then,” said Dorothy.
“Going up in spite of the rain?”
“I’ve got to. We can’t afford to waste time—the weather’s not so bad.”
“There are storm warnings out all along the coast.”
“I’ll be careful, Daddy.”
“All right. Bye-bye till dinner time.”
“Bye.”
She hung up the receiver and for the rest of the morning, busied herself
about the house, determined not to let her mind dwell upon the darker
side of this latest development. After lunch she changed into flying
clothes and went out to the hangar.
Unlocking the doors, she set to work filling the amphibian’s gasoline
tanks. Then she went over the engine carefully and gave it a short
ground test. After that, the instruments came under her inspection.
Altogether, she gave her plane a thorough overhauling, which was not
entirely necessary, but kept her from thinking and helped to kill time.
About twenty minutes to five she ran the amphibian out of the hangar and
took off into the teeth of a fine rain. It was no part of her plan to
fly in the neighborhood of the Beach Club until the plane she was
seeking should put in an appearance. Her self-imposed duty was to spot
the mysterious amphibian and to follow it to its destination without
allowing the pilot or an understudy to spot her.
So instead of banking and heading for Tokeneke, when her bus had
sufficiently topped the trees, she continued to keep the stick back so
as to maintain a proper climbing angle. Back in her first thirty hours
of early flight training, it would have been difficult for her to keep
Will-o’-the-Wisp (more often termed Willie or Wispy) at the correct
angle safely below the stalling point, unless she could first recognize
that angle by the position of the plane’s nose relative to the horizon.
On a wet day like this with an obscured horizon it would have been
well-nigh impossible: at best, a series of bad stalls would have been
the result. But now her snapping gray eyes sparkled with exhilaration;
she no longer needed the horizon as a guide. Between leveling off every
thousand feet or so, to keep the engine from overheating, she shot
Will-o’-the-Wisp up to six thousand, maintaining the proper angle of
climb by the “feel” of the plane alone.
With her altimeter indicating the height she wanted, she leveled off
again; then, executing a sharp reverse control or “flipper” turn to the
left she resumed straight flight again by the application of up aileron
and opposite rudder. The plane was now headed south, several points to
the west of the Beach Club.
The visibility was even poorer than at a lower level, but the young
pilot knew this part of the country as she knew her own front lawn.
Either dropping or swerving her plane’s nose at frequent intervals so as
to get an unimpeded view ahead, she passed over the wooded ridges toward
the shore, over the city of Stamford and out over the slate grey waters
of Long Island Sound.
That body of water is some six or eight miles wide at this point, and
upon reaching the opposite shore, Dorothy commenced a patrol of the Long
Island shore line from Lloyds’ Neck, which lies just west of Oyster Bay,
to the farther side of Smithtown Bay, a distance of fifteen or sixteen
miles. And as she flew, she kept a sharp lookout for planes appearing
out of the murk toward the Connecticut shore.
Since she knew it was the bearded aviator’s practice to fly at a
comparatively low altitude, Dorothy chose to keep Will-o’-the-Wisp at
this greater height for two reasons. An airplane flying far above
another plane is much more unlikely to be noticed by the pilot of the
lower plane than one flying at his own level or below him. Then again,
by keeping to the higher air, Dorothy, under normal weather conditions,
was bound to increase her range of vision proportionately. Her plan was
a good one. But weather is not a respecter of plans. The visibility,
poor enough when she started, gradually grew worse and worse. Although
what wind there was seemed to have died, long curling tongues of mist
crept out of the east, while above her head she saw black thunder
clouds, sinking lower and lower.
Now one of the first things any aviator learns is that fog must be
avoided at all costs. Any attempt to land in it is attended by
considerable danger. Dorothy knew only too well that in case of a fog
bank cutting the plane off from its destination, the flight must be
discontinued by a landing, or by return to the point of departure.
She glanced overside again. Long Island Sound was no longer visible.
“He’s late now, unless I’ve missed him,” she said to herself. “I’ll
finish this leg of the patrol and if he doesn’t show up by the time I’m
over Oyster Bay, Willie and I will head for home.”
Pushing her stick slightly forward to decrease her altitude, she
continued along her course.
Three minutes later, she realized her mistake. The wisps of fog seemed
to gather together, and Will-o’-the-Wisp sank into an opaque bank that
blinded her.
“Gee, but I’m stupid!” she mumbled. “What was it that text-book I read
only yesterday said? ‘In the event of general formation of fog below, an
immediate landing must be made before it becomes thick enough to
interfere seriously with the approach.’ Heavens, what a fool I am! Now
that we’re in it, though, I might as well see if it thins out nearer the
water.”
Her compass told her she was flying almost due west. Throttling down the
engine, she pushed her stick still farther forward, at the same time
applying right aileron and hard right rudder. As the proper gliding
angle was reached, she neutralized her elevators and held the nose up as
necessary. Next, she checked her wing with the ailerons and eased her
rudder pressure. Then having made a quarter-spiral with a change in
course of 90 degrees, she applied left aileron and hard left rudder
until the wings were level laterally, and with her stick still held
forward, continued to descend in a straight glide until she was within
fifteen hundred feet of the water. The plane was heading directly back
across Long Island Sound toward the Connecticut shore.
But each moment the fog seemed to grow more dense. To land blindly meant
a certain nose-in and was out of the question. And even if the mist did
not hold to the water’s level, to fly lower meant the chance of striking
the mast or spar of a ship, a lighthouse, perhaps, or anything else that
came her way.
“We’re up against it, Wispy,” she murmured, opening the throttle and
pulling back her stick. “If we can’t go down, at least we can ‘go
above,’ as they say in the Navy. Beat it for the heavens, my dear. This
beastly fog can’t run all the way to Mars!”
Dorothy was not frightened, although she knew how serious was her
predicament. No pilot likes flying blind in a fog. With the knowledge
that what one sees, one hits, it is a nerve-wracking experience.
But Dorothy’s nerves were good—none better—and she sent her plane into
a long, steady climb, hoping for the best and keeping her vivid
imagination well within control.
Headed into the north, she continued her climb, leveling off every few
thousand feet to ease the strain on her engine. When the altimeter
marked thirteen thousand she began to worry, for the service ceiling of
her plane was but two thousand higher. The cold damp of the thick mist
penetrated like a knife. Hemmed in by the dank grey walls, she could
barely distinguish the nose of her ship. The active needles of the
altimeter and rate of climb indicator were the only visible signs that
Will-o’-the-Wisp was moving at all.
Fourteen thousand feet—intense physical discomfort, added to the
nervous strain, were becoming intolerable. Dorothy clenched her
chattering teeth in an effort to retain her control. Then with a
suddenness astonishing, the fog parted and she sailed into clear air.
Below her the heavy mist swirled and rolled like a sluggish sea,
grey-yellow streaked with dirty streamers, while directly ahead loomed a
towering mass of cotton-like clouds rising tier upon tier as far as she
would see.
A quick glance over her shoulder and to the sides, brought forth the
fact that this small pocket of free air was entirely surrounded by
similar cloud formations. There was no time for thought. Automatically,
her hand clasping the stick shot forward, bringing down the nose to the
position of level flight, and she drove the amphibian straight at the
thunderhead. Immediately afterward the plane passed into the cloud, and
like a leaf caught in an inverted maelstrom, it was whipped out of her
control.
Gripped by tremendous air forces, the amphibian was shot up and
sideways, at a speed that burned Dorothy’s lungs. Tossed about like a
rag doll, with her safety-belt almost cutting her body in two, she was
thrown hither and yon with the plane, blind, and without the slightest
idea as to her position.
Never in her wildest nightmares had she dreamed that a heavy plane,
weighing close to four thousand pounds when empty, could be tossed about
in such fashion by currents of the air.
For a space of time that seemed years, she was entirely away from the
controls. But gradually, with infinite effort and in spite of the
whirling jolts of her air steed, Dorothy managed to hook her heels under
the seat. A second later she had caught the stick and was pushing it
forward into the instrument board.
Will-o’-the-Wisp reared like an outlawed bronco, then dived until the
airspeed indicator showed one hundred and sixty-five miles per hour.
Still her downward speed was less than the rate of the upward draft, for
the rate of climb indicator told the frenzied girl that the plane was
being lifted fourteen hundred feet per minute.
Still diving at 45 degrees, the phenomenal force of the updraft carried
the plane to the mushroom top of the cloud, where with a jar like an
elevator hitting the ceiling, it was flung forth into the outer air.