Lost In The Air | Page 7

level ground. Bruce thanked their luck for the
wide-spreading wings which would impede their fall.
A moment later he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge
higher than any they had passed over. Here then was the end, he
thought. But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those
rocks by a hundred feet and just beyond Bruce gasped and looked
again.
"A miracle!" murmured Barney.
"Or a mirage," whispered Bruce.
Before them lay a square of level land, green,--in the moonlight. All
about the square the land was black with trees, but there was a landing
place. It was as if their trip had been long planned, their coming
anticipated, and that a level field was cleared for them.

It was only a matter of moments till they were bumping along over the
ground. Soon they were standing free from their harnesses and silently
shaking hands.
Barney was the first to speak.
"Say, do you know," he said, "we're in somebody's wheat-field!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed the Major.
"See for yourself," The boy held before their astonished eyes a handful
of almost ripened heads of wheat.
"Then what's happened?" demanded the Major. "Have you gone due
south by west instead of north by west?"
"Unless my compass lied, and it has never done so before, we have
gone north by west since we started, and we are--or ought to be at this
moment--four hundred miles from what the white man calls
civilization."
"Well," said the Major, "since we are here, wherever that is, I suggest
that we unpack our blankets and get out of the man's wheat-field,
whoever he may be. The mystery will keep until morning."
This they proceeded to do.
A clump of stubby, heavy-stemmed spruce trees offered them shelter
from the chill night wind, and there, rolled in blankets, they prepared to
sleep.
But Bruce could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and
sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that
last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So he
lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This wheat-field
now? Had he really been misdirected by the compass on the plane? To
prove that he had not, he drew from his pocket a small compass, and
placing it in a spot of moonlight, took the relative direction of the last

ridge over which they had passed and the plane in the wheat-field. He
was right; the compass had been true. They were four hundred miles
northwest of the last mile of track laid on the Hudson Bay Railroad,
deep in a wilderness, over which they had traveled for hours without
sighting a single sign of white man's habitation. Yet, here they were at
the edge of a wheat-field.
What was the answer? Had some Indian tribe taken to farming? With
the forests alive with game, the streams with fish, this seemed
impossible. Of a sudden, the boy started. It was, of course--
The sudden snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back
with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles
from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves,
grizzlies, some unknown terror, perhaps?
Then, in another second his eyes bulged. In an open space, between two
spruce trees, where the moon shone brightly, had appeared for a
moment a patch of white. Then, amid the crashing of small twigs, the
thing was gone. In childhood, Bruce had been told many stories of
ghosts and goblins by his Irish nurse. He had never overcome his dread
of them. But it was with the utmost difficulty that he suppressed a shout.
Then he laughed softly, for the crackling twigs told him he had seen a
creature of flesh and blood, no ghost. He chuckled again and far in the
dark a hoot-owl seemed to answer him and his company was a source
of comfort.
Yet, here was, after all, another problem: What was this white-coated
creature? Of all the wild things of the forest, none was white save the
Arctic wolf. It was doubtful if he roamed so far south, especially in
summer, and besides, this creature was too large and heavy to be a wolf.
Bruce thought of all the animals he knew and gave it up. It might have
been a cow. Cows in this wilderness did not seem more improbable
than a wheat-field, but the creature had been too light of tread for that.
Could it have been an Indian dressed in white, tanned deerskin? He was
inclined to take this for the right solution, and wondered if he should
awaken his companions. He could not tell what danger threatened.
Finally he decided to