t our S. O. S." he told himself. "We ought to
get sight of their lights pretty soon. But then," his hopes grew faint,
"not many ships in these seas. Might not have heard us. Might not be
able to reach us. Might--"

He broke off abruptly. A blinding flash of lightning had illumined the
waters for miles in every direction. In that flash his eyes had seen
something; at least, he thought they had; some craft away to the left of
them; a craft which reminded him of one he had sailed upon many a time;
his father's yacht, the _Kittlewake_.

"But of course it couldn't be," he told himself. "Nobody'd be crazy
enough to--"

A second flash illumined the water, but this time, strain his eyes as he
might, he caught no glimpse of craft of any sort.

"Must have dreamed it," he muttered. He closed his eyes for a second and
in that second saw his sister Gladys clearly mirrored on his mind's
vision. She was staggering down a pitching deck.

"Huh!" he muttered, shaking himself violently, "this business is
getting my goat. I'll be delirious if I don't watch out."

Again he fixed his gaze upon the spot of light as it traveled over the
water.

He had kept steadily at the task for fifteen minutes, was wondering how
much longer the gas would hold out, wondering, too, whether the storm
was ever going to break, when he caught the pilot's signal in the tube.

"How about trying another message?" his companion called.

"Up here?" he asked in dismay.

"I know--awful dangerous. But we've got to risk something. Lost if we
don't."

"All right, I'll try." He began cautiously to unbuckle his harness.

Scarcely had he loosened two of the three straps which held him in place
when the plane gave a sudden lurch. Having struck a pocket, it dropped
like an elevator cage released from its cable, straight down.

"Oh--ah!" he exclaimed as he caught at a rod just in time to escape
being hurled away.

"Got to be careful," he told himself, "awful careful! Have to hold on
with one hand while I work with the other. Feet'll help too."

When the plane had settled again, he loosened the last strap, then began
with the utmost caution to drag himself to the surface of the plane
above him.

Once a vivid flash of lightning showed him the dizzy depths beneath him.
He was at that moment clinging to a rod with both hands. His legs were
twined about a second. Thus he hung suspended out over two thousand feet
of air and as many fathoms of water.

For a moment