A SEA ABOVE A SEA
When Alfred Brightwood had tilted the nose of the _Stormy Petrel_ upward
and away from the threatening bank of clouds she rose rapidly. A
thousand, two thousand, three, four, five thousand feet she mounted to
dizzy heights above the sea.
As they mounted, the stars, swinging about in the sky, like incandescent
bulbs strung on a wire, made their appearance here and there. They came
out rapidly, by twos and threes, by scores and hundreds. In clusters and
fantastic figures they swam about in the purple night.
Almost instantly the sea disappeared from beneath them and in its place
came a new sea; a sea of dark rushing clouds. Rising two thousand feet
above the level of the ocean, this mass of moisture hanging there in the
sky took on the appearance of a second sea. As Vincent looked down upon
it he found it easy to believe that were they to drop slowly down upon
it, they would be seized upon and torn this way, then that by the
violence of the storm that was even now raging beneath them, and that
their plane would be cast at last, a shapeless mass, upon the real sea
which was roaring and raging beneath it.
"How wonderful nature is!" he breathed. "It would be magnificent were it
not so terrible."
He was thinking of the gasoline in their tank and he shuddered. Would it
last until the storm had passed, or would they be obliged to volplane
down into that seething tempest?
He put his lips to the tube. "You better use just enough gas to keep us
afloat," he suggested.
Alfred muttered something like, "Think I'm a fool?" Then for a long
time, with the black sea of clouds rising and falling, billowing up like
the walls of a mammoth tent, then sagging down to rise again, they
circled and circled. They were not circling now in search of adventure,
to find some island which might bring them great wealth, but to preserve
life. How long that circling could last, neither could tell.
* * * * *
When Curlie Carson left the wireless cabin of the _Kittlewake_, he
grasped a rail which ran along the cabin, just in time to prevent
himself from being washed overboard by a giant wave. As it was, the
water lifted his feet from the deck and, having lifted him as the wind
lifts a flag, it waved him up and down three times, at last to send him
crashing, knees down, on the deck. The wind was half knocked out of him,
but he was still game. He did not attempt to regain the wireless cabin
but fought his way along the side of that cabin toward his own stateroom
door.
Now a vivid flash of light revealed the water-washed deck. A coil of
rope, all uncoiled by the waves, was wriggling like a serpent in the
black sea.
"No use to try to save it," he mumbled. "No good here, anyhow."
A yellow light, hanging above his stateroom door, dancing dizzily,
appeared at one moment to take a plunge into the sea and at the next to
dash away into the ink-black sky.
Curlie was drenched to the skin. He was benumbed with the cold and
shocked into half insensibility at the tremendous proportions of the
storm. He wondered vaguely about the engineer below. Was the water
getting at the engines? He still felt the throb of them beneath his
feet. Well, that much was good anyway. And the skipper? Was he still at
the wheel? Must be, for the yacht continued to take the waves head-on.
Short and light as she was, the craft appeared to leap from wave-crest
to wave-crest. Now she missed the leap by a foot and the water drenched
her deck anew. And now she overstepped and came down with a solid impact
that set her shuddering from stern to keel.
"Good old _Kittlewake_," he murmured, "you sure were built for rough
service!"
But now he had reached his stateroom door. With a lurch he threw open
the door, with a second he fell through, a third slammed it shut.
One second his eyes roved about the place; the next his lips parted as
something bumped against his foot.
Stooping, he lifted up a long affair the size and shape of a round cedar
fencepost. It was this he had brought aboard just before sailing. It had
been shaken down and had been rolling about the floor.
Having examined its wrapping carefully, he shook it once or twice.
"Guess you're all right," he muttered. "And you had better be! A whole
lot depends on you in a pinch."
His eyes roved about the room. At length, snatching a blanket from his
berth, he tore it into strips. Then, throwing back his mattress, he
placed the postlike affair beneath it and lashed it firmly to the
springs.
"There!" he exclaimed with much satisfaction, "you'll be safe until
needed, if you _are_ needed, and--and you never can tell."
* * * * *
The end of the seaplane's last flirt with death and destruction came
suddenly and without warning. Overcome as he was by constant watching,
dead for sleep and famished for food, Vincent Ardmore had all but fallen
asleep in his seat on the fuselage when a hoarse snort from one of the
motors, followed quickly by a rattling grate from the other, startled
him into complete wakefulness.
The silence which followed these strange noises was appalling. It was
like the lull before a hurricane.
"Gas is gone," said Alfred. There was fear and defiance in his tone,
defiance of Nature which he believed had treated him badly "Have to go
down now."
"Go down!" Vincent shivered at the thought. Go down to what?
He glanced below, then a ray of hope lighted his face. The storm was
passing--had all but passed. The clouds beneath them were no longer
densely black. A mere mist, they hung like a veil over the sea.
"But the water?" His heart sank. "It will still be raging."
The storm had not so far passed as he at first thought. The plane cut a
circling path as she descended. Her wings were broad; her drop was
gradual. As they entered the first layer of clouds, she gave a lurch
forward, but with wonderful control the young pilot righted her. Seconds
passed, then again she tipped, this time more perilously. But again she
was righted. Now she was caught in a little flurry of wind that set her
spinning. A nose-dive seemed inevitable, but once more she came to
position. Now, as they neared the surface of the sea, a wild, racing
wind, the tail of the storm, seized them and hurled them headlong before
it. In its grasp, there was no longer thought of control. The only
question now was how they would strike the water and when. The very rush
of the wind tore the breath from Vincent's lungs. Crushed back against
the fuselage, he awaited the end. Once, twice, three times they turned
over in a mad whirl. Then, with a sudden rending crash and a wild burst
of spray, they struck.
The plane had gone down on one wing. For a second she hung suspended
there. Vincent caught his breath. If she went one way there was a
chance; if the other, there was none. He thought of loosening his
straps, but did not. So he hung there. Came a sudden crash. The right
motor had torn from its lashings and plunged into the sea.
The next second the plane settled to the left. Saved for a moment, the
boy drew a deep breath. A second crash and the remaining motor was gone.
During this crash the boy was completely submerged, but the buoyant
plane brought him up again. Then, for a moment, he was free to think, to
look about him. Instinctively his eyes sought the place where his
companion had been seated. It was empty. Alfred was gone.
Covering his eyes with his hands, he tried to tell himself it was not
true. Then, suddenly uncovering them, he searched the surface of the
troubled sea. Once he fancied he caught a glimpse of a white hand above
a wave. He could not be sure; it might have been a speck of foam. Only
one thing he could be sure of; his throbbing brain told it to him over
and over: Alfred Brightwood, his friend, was gone--gone forever. The sea
had swallowed him up.