SAVED BY WIRELESS.
Frank was right. To keep on was all they could do. Without even a star
to guide them and a wind fast springing up, surrounded by a display of
electricity, that viewed from a place of safety would have been
magnificent, but situated as they were was a terrible menace, they had
no alternative.
The boy captain of the _Golden Eagle_ stuck bravely to his wheel and
time and again when the vessel gave a sickening “duck,” he righted her
in the nick of time with a skilful adjustment of his planes and
compensating balances. Neither boy spoke—indeed, in the roar of the
elements that now surrounded them, it would have been difficult to hear.
Crash followed crash so swiftly that like the lightning display it
seemed all blended into one long horrible glare and uproar. Still,
mercifully, it had not rained.
Harry crawled forward after a time from his seat by the engine and
shouted in Frank’s ear:
“Where are we now?”
“Driving due east, I should judge.”
“Have you any hope that we can make a landing?”
Frank shook his head.
“Not in this.”
“Then there is only one thing to be done?”
“Yes.”
“Keep on driving her?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Good Lord!” thought Harry, “if the gasolene would hold out we’d land in
Europe.”
The above conversation was not carried on in consecutive order as
reported. The exigencies of guiding the craft, and the noise of the
storm, made that an impossibility. Fragmentary sentences were all the
boys could exchange, but they understood one another so well that with
them a word meant as much as a whole sentence.
On and on drove the plunging craft and still the accident both boys had
feared—the short circuiting of the engine—had not occurred. Could it be
that they were going to weather it after all? Wild as the thought
appeared, it put new heart into them.
“Do you know where we are?” asked Harry, clinging to the forward rail of
the pilot-house.
“Not the slightest idea,” was the reply, “but I should say we cannot be
far from the sea.”
The sea! The realization of this new peril sent a chill of terror
through both boys. Once blown out to sea and they would stand not a
chance of rescue.
“Hadn’t we better chance it and drop where we are?” asked Harry at
length.
Frank shook a negative response.
“It would mean certain death—we should be dashed to pieces,” he said;
“if we keep on we’ve got a fighting chance.”
As they were urged along before the storm Harry opened the trap in the
pilot-house floor and peered through. By the blue illumination of the
constant lightning display, he could see that they were still driving
over the tree-tops. They were then still over solid land.
There was not a light to be seen, however, and wherever they were, they
had been driven out of the civilized part of Nicaragua it seemed. The
boys’ hearts sank as they gazed at the character of the country over
which they were racing along. As Frank had said, there was not a chance
for them to land there. They might ride the storm out if they kept on
going—that was all they could do.
Once Frank entertained a desperate thought of heading the ship about,
but as he put the helm over she gave such a frightful yaw that both boys
thought the minute was their last. The _Golden Eagle_ plunged down in a
sickening swerve till it seemed that she could never right herself.
Frantically Frank, although he could hardly keep his feet on the
inclined pilot-house floor, which was pitched over at an angle of
forty-five degrees, fought to bring her back on an even keel with one
hand, while he clung to the pilot-house rail with the other.
After what had seemed an eternity of suspense the craft answered her
helm and regulating planes and regained her balance. The scare the boys
had received, though, prevented them from trying any more experiments.
Thoroughly exhausted Frank at last relinquished the wheel to Harry, at
the latter’s earnest solicitation. As the boys changed places the ship,
none too steady under the conditions, gave a lurch to port that threw
Frank from his feet and sent him crashing against the left-hand rail of
the pilot-house. The force of the impact of his body snapped off the
stanchions that supported the canvas screening round the pilot-box and
he would have shot over the edge into countless feet of space if Harry
had not grasped him and hauled him back to safety. Frank thanked him
with a look. It was no time for words.
“Hark,” suddenly cried Frank, as there came a lull in the storm, “what
is that?”
Below them both boys could hear a long, booming sound.
“It’s the surf breaking on the beach!” groaned Frank, “only Providence
can save us now.”
How much longer they drove on above the sea, they had no means of
reckoning, even if they had cared to. Their only hope was in daylight
when there was a chance that some ship might see them and pick them up.
Harry sat grimly at the wheel, keeping the creaking ship dead before the
wind, which had now increased.
“It’s not much use,” he shouted to Frank, who lay on the pilot-house
floor so as to keep the center of equilibrium as low as possible, “but
we might as well stick to it as long as the engine does.”
Frank nodded and shouted back his favorite “While there’s life there’s
hope.”
Suddenly, while an unusually prolonged and vivid flash enveloped the
_Golden Eagle_ and showed a wild sea leaping hungrily below her, Harry
gave a loud shout:
“Frank, Frank,” he yelled, “look there!”
He pointed a little to the north of the direction the _Golden Eagle_ was
taking, or rather being driven, which, though the boys did not know it,
was due east.
The elder brother raised his head above the pilot-house railing but the
flash that illumined the object that caused Harry’s exclamation had died
out.
“It was a steamer and she’ll pass right below us,” roared Harry.
“How can we attract their attention,” shouted back Frank.
“There’s one chance in a thousand and we’ll take it,” was the response
of the youth at the wheel.
“Send out a wireless call.”
Frank leaped to the sending apparatus of the _Golden Eagle’s_ wireless
plant. To his delirious delight it was working perfectly despite the
ship’s buffeting.
Even as he stripped off the cover, and lowered the ground rope which was
interwoven with strands of phosphor bronze wire, though, he realized
what a long chance it was they were taking. The steamer was nearer by
this time. They could in fact see her lights below them; but she seemed
a small craft, as well as they in their frenzied excitement at the
sudden vision of hope that flamed up in them, could make out. It was
unlikely she carried wireless. But, as Harry had said, it was one chance
in a thousand. With a fervent prayer that it might be that ten hundredth
chance, Frank sent the spark flashing and leaping across the crackling
gap.
Dot—dot—dot! Dot—dot! Dot—dot—dot!
It was the universal signal of desperate need that his trembling fingers
spelled out: S. O. S.![1]
-----
Footnote 1:
S. O. S. is now the wireless distress call. C. Q. D., the former
tocsin having being used by too many would-be humorous amateurs to
make its continuance advisable.—_Author’s note._
If there were a ship fitted with wireless within the radius of their
call she would come to their assistance, but both boys realized that
that help would be too late to do them any good. Their one chance lay in
securing the immediate attention of the craft below them.
“Fire your revolver, Harry!” shouted Frank, bending above the flaring
sender spark.
The younger boy drew his magazine gun from his belt and fired all ten
bullets it contained in a string of reports.
There came a blinding glare of lightning. In its radiance the boys, high
in the air, could see below them the scene on the steamer as if in the
light of day. The men on the steamer had evidently also seen them or
heard the reports of Harry’s revolver, or what was more likely, received
the wireless flash. Men were running about her decks and on the bridge
the boys could see some one, evidently in command, issuing orders to
several sailors who were casting loose a boat.
Their inspection was cut short. As the next flash revealed to them a
boat being lowered over the side of the vessel and men pointing up at
them, something parted with a loud crack.
It was one of the rudder wires that had carried away and a more serious
accident at that moment could not have well befallen them. The _Golden
Eagle_ without her rudder controls heeled over drunkenly till, with a
loud crashing sound, her engine was ripped clean out of her by its own
weight.
The next minute the boys felt themselves dropping through what seemed
endless space down to the roaring sea.
Even as they fell Frank realized that the parting of the engine from its
bed had been a piece of good luck for them for relieved of that weight,
there was a chance of the aeroplane floating by her own buoyancy till
the boat could pick them up. All this shot through his mind in a second,
and almost as it occurred to him he felt the aeroplane hit the water
with a mighty thump. The next moment Frank felt the water close above
his head and began fighting desperately to regain the surface.
Fortunately both he and Harry were skilled swimmers and as much at home
in the water as Newfoundland dogs. As Frank at last found himself safe,
clinging to the top of the half-submerged aeroplane, he anxiously looked
about him for Harry. What he feared was that Harry might have got
entangled in the stay wires or tiller ropes as the _Golden Eagle_ fell
into the sea.
To Frank’s unspeakable relief, however, at this juncture, he heard his
name called right behind him, and a second later he had fished Harry out
of the sea and hauled him up beside him on to the gradually sinking
wreck of the _Golden Eagle_. They both joined in a lusty shout to
attract the attention of the men in the boat they had seen lowered just
before their dizzy fall.
Their shouts were hardly needed, however, for, from the bridge of the
vessel, there shot out a long finger of radiance from the searchlight
which, after sweeping about a few times, fell full on the boys. Drenched
as they were they could not forbear waving their hands and giving a
cheer as its light fell full on them.
Fifteen minutes later the Boy Aviators were on board the insurgent
gunboat _General Estrada_ and safe.