Night came, and, as the blackness settled down, the gale seemed to increase in fury.  It howled through the slender wire rigging of the whizzer, and sent the craft careening from side to side, and sometimes thrust her down into a cavern of the air, only to lift her high again, almost like a ship on the heaving ocean below them.

As darkness settled in blacker and blacker, Tom had a glimpse below him, of tossing lights on the water.

“We just passed over some vessel,” he announced.  “I hope they are in no worse plight than we are.”  Then, there suddenly came to him a thought of the parents of Mary Nestor, who were somewhere on the ocean, in the yacht resolute bound for the West Indies.

“I wonder if they’re out in this storm, too?” mused Tom.  “If they are, unless the vessel is a staunch one, they may be in danger.”

The thought of the parents of the girl he cared so much for being in peril, was not reassuring to Tom, and he began to busy himself about the machinery of the airship, to take his mind from the presentiment that something might happen to the resolute.

“We’ll have our own troubles before morning,” the lad mused, “if this wind doesn’t die down.”

There was no indication that this was going to be the case, for the gale increased rather than diminished.  Tom looked at their speed gage.  They were making a good ninety miles an hour, for it had been decided that it was best to keep the engine and propellers going, as they steadied the ship.

“Ninety miles an hour,” murmured Tom.  “And we’ve been going at that rate for ten hours now.  That’s nearly a thousand miles.  We are quite a distance out to sea.”

He looked at a compass, and noted that, instead of being headed directly across the Atlantic they were bearing in a southerly direction.

“At this rate, we won’t come far from getting to the West Indies ourselves,” reasoned the young inventor.  “But I think the gale will die away before morning.”

The storm did not, however.  More fiercely it blew through the hours of darkness.  It was a night of terror, for they dared not go to sleep, not knowing at what moment the ship might turn turtle, or even rend apart, and plunge with them into the depths of the sea.

So they sat up, occasionally attending to the machinery, and noting the various gages.  Mr. Damon made hot coffee, which they drank from time to time, and it served to refresh them.

There came a sudden burst of fury from the storm, and the airship rocked as if she was going over.

“Bless my heart!” cried Mr. Damon, springing up.  “That was a close call!”

Tom said nothing.  Mr. Fenwick looked pale and alarmed.

The hours passed.  They were swept ever onward, at about the same speed, sometimes being whirled downward, and again tossed upward at the will of the wind.  The airship was well-nigh helpless, and Tom, as he realized their position, could not repress a fear in his heart as he thought of the parents of the girl he loved being tossed about on the swirling ocean, in a frail pleasure yacht.