“They’re dropping depth bombs, intending to get the slinker!” announced Beverly jubilantly.

“Here’s hoping they do then!” cried Jack, and immediately afterwards added:  “But it’s all over for us, boys, because the fog’s shut it off completely.  Might as well get along on our way; but I’m happy to know those Yankee boats came up in time to save everybody aboard the steamer.  What a bully view we had of the performance!”

“It’s such things that are apt to break the monotony and routine of a long flight like the one we’ve undertaken,” remarked Tom.  “In time, of course, the dash across the Atlantic will become quite common; and those who make it are apt to see wonderful sights.”

“Two hundred miles out,” Jack was saying to himself as he sat there still holding the glasses in his hand, though not attempting to make use of them, and his eyes ranged longingly toward the western horizon where the blue of the sky touched the dark green of the boundless sea, all his thoughts centered on the goal that lay far distant across that vast waste of tumbling waters.

So as the sun started to climb in the eastern heavens the flight of the big bombing plane carrying the trio of adventurous ones was continued, every mile left behind bringing them that much nearer their destination, with the future still an unsolved problem.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE COLD HAND OF FEAR

Noon came and went, with the same steady progress being maintained hour after hour.  Tom relieved Beverly at the pilot’s berth, and the latter succeeded in getting some much needed rest.  Still, none of them could sleep comfortably, which was hardly to be wondered at considering their strange surroundings.

“My first nap when flying, for a fact!” admitted Colin, after he had awakened, and managed to stretch his stiffened limbs.

“Tough work trying to get a few winks of sleep when one is quivering all over with excitement,” Jack remarked.

They were no longer maintaining such a high course, having descended until the heaving sea lay not more than a thousand feet below.  Nothing was in sight in any direction, which was one reason for Tom’s dropping down as he did.

“A lot of water,” Jack commented, for they had started to try out the wonderful little wireless telephone, to find that it really worked splendidly.  “Guess after the flood Noah must have thought that way too.  But shucks! we haven’t got even a dove to send out.”

“We happen to have something better,” Tom told him, “which is the power to shoot our boat through space at the rate of a mile a minute.  No ark business about this craft.”

“Well, is there any objection to breaking our fast again?” the other inquired, changing the subject.

Beverly seemed to think not, for he proceeded to get out the hamper in which much of their prepared food was contained.