best he could, and all his companions could do was to cling to a slender
hope and endure the lashing of the gale.

But Jack Darrow did not propose to be cast to the ground--and the
flying machine and his friends with him--without some further attempt
to avert such a catastrophe.

After the first breath-taking rush of the storm he diverted the course
of the machine again upward. He could scarcely see, the driving rain
was so blinding; nor could he observe the indicators before him with
any clearness. But he was quite sure that the enemy that had driven
him down into the storm-cloud could see the _Snowbird_ no better than he
could see that strange aeroplane that had threatened to collide with
them.

So he shot the _Snowbird_ upward again at a long slant, and put on all
the power of the engine to drive her onward. The flying machine shook
and throbbed in every part. The power of the engines would have driven
her, under other and more favorable conditions, at more than one hundred
miles an hour--possibly a hundred and twenty-five.

Jack himself was almost blinded and deafened. He was strapped to his
seat, so could give both hands to the work of manipulating the levers.
He brought the _Snowbird_ through the cloud and--with startling
suddenness--they shot out of the mass of rolling moisture and into the
sunlight of the dawn. But they were far off their course.

The change from the chaos of the storm-cloud to the almost perfect
calm of the upper ether was so great that it was almost stunning. For
a minute none of the five spoke a word.