CHAPTER III
THE SPECTRE IN THE CLOUD
"There it is!----"
Chick's voice, shrill with terror, died away, and Don, startled for aninstant, almost let the glide become a dive; but he caught his stickand gunned ahead, giving up the glide they had been in.
The radial engine, though of as silent a type as any, drowned any replyfrom Garry or Don until the youthful pilot, climbing, had gained a goodthousand feet more of altitude. Then he cut the gun and let the glidebegin, so that the Dart was quietly nose-low in a gentle glide.
"Don't go off at half-cock that way," he remonstrated.
"No!" Garry was a trifle annoyed by Chick's impetuous screeches. "Ifyou insist on yelling 'wolf!' every time the sheet lightning flickerson the clouds, you'd better be put down--and stop trying to be anairlane guard."
"Was it sheet lightning?" Chick asked lamely.
"Yes. There's a storm brewing."
"Then we'd better go home!"
"Don't be so anxious." Garry spoke sharply. "The storm isn't here andwon't be for an hour. We're going to stay aloft at least till the mail'plane comes in. They 're inaugurating the new ship-to-shore serviceand you wouldn't want to be making a pass at the field just when thatcrate comes over, and make him lose ten minutes waiting for us to shootthe field and land and get the ship off the runway."
"No."
Don climbed again.
That cruise, however, began to be tedious. Already they had been for agood half hour aloft, cruising to and fro, mostly over the dismal, darkreaches of the salt marsh.
Don chose to stick quite closely over the area which had been the sceneof one real mishap and several other narrowly averted crashes.
The spectre had always appeared over the swamp.
"I wish they'd start draining it," Don mused, thinking of the gloomymarsh below his trucks. "Those engineers spend so much time surveying!If they'd get their men out there, and start work, there'd soon be nodark place close to the airport, and the ghost would go away. Or--ifanybody should be trying to ruin Uncle Bruce's new real estatedevelopment and the airport business, they'd see it was no use andquit!"
Having nothing to occupy his mind, as he kept the Dart almostautomatically at flying speed and in level flight or climbing for asubsequent glide, the youth, depending on Garry and Chick for theirfirst inkling of anything unusual, reviewed the strange mysteries whichhad upset the morale not only of the airport personnel and of thepilots, but of the residents of Port Washington and the vicinity, aswell.
Four weeks before, to the day, just before the dedication of the newairport which had been opened in conjunction with the alreadyestablished seaplane base and aircraft plant, an airplane had crackedup in the swamp. It had approached, down wind, over the morass that laywhere the draining project would later bring airport expansion and acottage community. Since the full night-landing light equipment had notbeen completed, at the newly dedicated field, no provision had beenmade at that time for night landings and so no one had been on watchfor the free-lance airplane which had gone down.
Its pilot had not been badly hurt and had managed to attract rescuersby use of flares.
His story, told that night, and later persisted in at the Inquiry Boardinvestigation of the smash, had been a weird one.
It had fired the superstitious air folks to hear him affirm that he hadbeen making his approach to try out the new field, quietly, when asudden glow of light in a cloud almost dead ahead of his nose, only ascant few feet higher, had startled him.
Almost at the same instant, as he maintained in his assertion, fromwithin the glowing cloud he had seen the swift approach of a shape.
"It was an airplane, but it wasn't an airplane!" he had maintained,declaring that its shape was blurred, its outlines ghostly, itsposition seemingly also to shake up and down, as though either the shipwas vibrating dreadfully or its very shape of terror made the moistcloud stuff shudder.
"It seemed to be coming down and straight at me!" the pilot haddeclared. "I got just the glimpse--then I dived, and of course myengine was full gun and I power-dived and only came out of it justabove the marsh."
Then he had added the finishing, terrifying word.
"I looked up, to see what had become of that other 'bus, and--the skywas silent, deserted, dark!"
On each of the succeeding seventh days, as Don recalled, a pilot hadset down, shaken and horrified, to report seeing a similar apparitionof the skies, a very phantom coming out of clouds!
"It's all imagination!" Don murmured, reflectively. "One caught thescare from the other!----"
"Don!----"
"There!--side-slip! Quick!"
Don, catching the fright if not the sense of Chick's scream, and thesurprise of Garry's order, kicked rudder to give the banked Dart,making a gentle circuit of the swamp, a chance to shift downward andsideways.
Then he glanced to his left: common sense told him that the bank withleft wingtip elevated, causing the slip to the right, and Garry'sconsequent order meant that whatever gave rise to the order was to hisleft and slightly higher. He looked that way.
Just before a brightening shimmer of Summer lightning blotted out thespectacle, Don saw what made his flesh crawl.
Apparently lighting up a large, fluffy, steamy-white cloud with its ownspectral glow, some phantom ship came fleetly forth through that misty,white screen.
Dark, almost black, yet not distinct and sharp, because of the mist hesupposed, that mystical, phantasmic craft grew large--and was blottedfrom view by the bright flash of the distant storm.
Gone! Absolutely vanished! Once seen, for a bare instant, the strangeand ghostly mirage had disappeared when the blaze of the lightningfaded.
Immediately Garry, cool and self-contained, sent over the side aparachute-flare, self-igniting with the jerk as the 'chute opened tosustain the vivid, unearthly light in mid-sky, slowly dropping.
Chick cowered. Garry remained erect, calm, poised, staring swiftlyabove, to either side, and below.
He saw nothing. Slightly blinded by the recent flash of Summerelectricity, and still being a little dazzled by the green of the flarethat had ignited almost in front of him, he could not make out anydistinct object in any direction.
Don, who had been looking down at his inclinometer to gauge his bank ashe glided, just when the cries first came, was not dazzled: he sent aswift, questing look in every direction.
The sky was blank, except for the after-flare of the dying electricaldischarge and the growing glare of the green light.
"But--was that still the shadow of the spook 'plane, that I just saw?"he muttered, inquiring of his straining eyes. If so, the barelydiscerned shadow was gone.
"I don't see Scott!" he shouted back to Chick. "Do you?"
Chick, speechless, shook his head.
"He's probably up above the clouds by this time!" called Garry; he knewhow fast was the Dart. Probably, as he reasoned it, the watching pilothad seen the light in the clouds before the green flare had gone overthe side. Its blaze had prevented their dimmed light from discerningthe Dart, that was all.
"There comes the mail 'plane!" cried Don, waving an arm toward theNorth. Down the Sound, bringing the mail from a vessel still a hundredmiles from land, the swift 'plane was seeking to prove the commercialadvisability of lopping off delays in getting trans-oceanic mail to itsdestination.
They watched the fleet approach of the small ship that had beencatapulted from a huge liner's cabin deck.
"Look!" Chick's voice was shrill.
Garry even, caught his breath. Unexpectedly, like the vision of afantastic nightmare, Don also saw the catastrophe.
Sharply, parallel with their own course, the mail 'plane tipped downits nose.
Before it, a luminous cloud seemed to glow with a weird, unearthlylight.
Down went the mail craft--into darkness--into the bay.
Sharply Don slapped his stick sidewise, kicking rudder. On wingtip heban
ked around, straightened, gave his engine full gun, elevating thenose, darting straight for that cloud. Still it seemed to glow!
On a full-gun climb Don made his ship climb at that cloud.
The glow disappeared.
Straight through the cloud he drove--and came out!
Except for their ship, immersed in that humid, wet mist for an instant,the cloud had been devoid of any tangible object. No other ship, hidingby some miracle of skilful piloting, had been there to dodge, to revealitself in escaping Don's intrepid charge.
Out of the cloud they sped.
Don cast his eyes backward. The fluff, hardly disturbed except for aswirl of fleecy smoke where their propeller had moiled up the edge ofthe filmy drapery, lay at the tail.
"Oh-h-h!" Again, almost inarticulate, Chick screamed.
"Dive!"
As he cried out, Garry realized that his call was useless--late!
Straight ahead of the Dragonfly's speeding, climbing nose, in one moreof those horrible, mistily glowing banks of Summer moisture, lit as ifwith a phantom's phosphorescent fire, their horrified eyes saw avision, dreadful, inescapable!
Two misty, shadowy airplanes, appearing as though silhouetted inshuddering brown against the gleaming of some infernal light, came atone another.
Don knew that his ship could not avoid adding its own crash to thatcataclysmic impact.
There was not time to dive.
Already the propeller was within a hundred feet of the others!
Don closed his eyes, braced.
Mechanically he had depressed the nose by throwing forward the stick.
But there was no rip and rend of wings stripped off as they went underthe trucks of those other airplanes.
There was nothing--neither impact nor blow, crash nor other sound.
Don looked swiftly upward.
The cloud was around them--dim--silent--ghostly! And dark!
And the other ships--had they dived, fallen? Or, were they but thephantoms of over-stimulated imagination?
They had come together--but Don realized that he had heard no crash.
Hastily he pulled out of the dive. Soberly he turned the nose towardMystery Airport--baffled--not knowing what to think, what to believe!