ning of this," he said evenly, "is going to be hectic.
There'll be lightning soon."

Almost on his words the gray mist out the cabin windows seemed to
flame. There was thunder even above the motors. But the faint,
perceptible trembling of the whole plane under the impulse of its
engines kept on. Bell kept his eyes on the bank and turn indicator,
glancing now and then at the altimeter.

"We've got to climb," he said shortly, "up where the lightning is,
too. We want to pass the Serra da Carioca with room to spare, or we'll
crash on it."

There was no noticeable change in the progress of the plane, of
course. Rain was dashing against the windows of the cabin with an
incredible velocity. Rain at a hundred miles an hour acts more like
hail than water, anyhow, and Bell was trusting grimly to the hope that
the propellers were of steel, which will withstand even hail, and a
hope that the blast through the engine cowlings would keep the wiring
free of water-made short circuits.

* * * * *

But the air was bad beyond belief. At times the plane spun like
thistledown in a vast and venomous flood that crashed into the
windows with a vicious rattling. Lightning began and grew fiercer. It
seemed at times as if the plane were whirling crazily in sheer
incandescent flame. The swift air-currents at the beginning of a
tropic thunderstorm were here multiplied in trickiness and velocity by
the hills of the Serra da Carioca, and Bell was flying blind as well.
The safety-belts were needed fifty times within twenty minutes, as the
big ship was flung about by fierce blasts that sometimes blew even the
rain upward for a time. And over all, as the amphibian spun madly, and
toppled crazily and fought for height, there was the terrific,
incessant crashing of thunder which was horribly close, and the
crackling flares of lightning all about.

"I'm going to take a chance," said Bell curtly above the uproar, with
the windows seeming to look out upon the fires of hell. "I think we're
high enough. The compass has gone crazy, but I'm going to risk it."

Again there was no perceptible alteration in the motion of the ship,
but he fought it steadily toward the west. And it seemed that he
actually was passing beyond the first fierce fringe of the storm,
because the lightning became--well, not less frequent, but less
continuous.

* * * * *

And suddenly, in a blinding flare of light that