“What’s going to happen, Tom?” asked Ned as he saw his chum leap toward the motor room. “Are we in danger?”

 

“In danger of losing time on account of a hot bearing, yes,” admitted Tom. “But in no danger as far as being forced down is concerned. I had planned for this—a landing in the sea.”

 

“Our boat-like body will keep us afloat,” explained Brinkley to Ned, whose strong point was certainly not mechanics, but finance. “You know we’re a hydroplane as well as an aeroplane.”

 

“I had forgotten it for a moment,” admitted Tom’s chum.

 

The first alarm over, he watched Tom and the three mechanics so manipulate the Air Monarch¹ as to bring her out of the partial nose dive into which she had fallen on losing speed. She was now coming down to the sea on a gentle slant².

 

“I don’t like nose dives!” murmured Tom, remembering the peril³ which he and Mary had so narrowly escaped from with the help of Brinkley and Hartman.

 

“We’ll make a three point landing,” observed Peltok as Tom, taking charge, began to guide his craft toward the waves which Ned could see, through the plate glass bottom in the cabin, rushing, as it were, up to meet them.

 

Not quite as gently as a feather, but with hardly enough of a jar to spill the water in the glasses on the table which Tom and Ned had quit in such a hurry, the Air Monarch sank to the surface of the sea where she rode easily under the influence of a gentle swell⁴.

 

“Are we going to stay here?” Ned asked, when he found that the craft was making no forward progress.

 

“Not any longer than we can help,” Tom answered. “Every minute counts when you’re trying to circle the globe in twenty days. But we’ll have to wait for that bearing to cool. Did she chew up the metal?” he asked Peltok, referring to the soft anti-friction lining⁵ material which the axle, or

分享到：