Above him now, Nick saw the darker gloom of wet clouds, three hundred feet above the earth. At times he flew in the base of them, the black water of the earth invisible below. Rain still filtered out of the clouds, and the ship flew into it and brought it back into the faces of Nick and the girl with a velocity that made it feel like grape-shot. It was almost impossible to face it, yet it must be faced; refuge behind the windshield of the ship was impossible--the utter black of the night required constant vigilance. * * * * * “For perhaps five minutes the Douglas handled normally enough that Nick was able to hold it on its course, flying by “feel” and his compass and his altimeter. A gnawing fear of a hidden hill or ridge in front of him clutched at the Patrol pilot; he had had friends who met their death by colliding with such barriers, made invisible by fog or darkness. From the disablement of the plane itself there seemed no immediate danger of a crash; it was extremely right-wing-heavy, but still manageable. He was seven minutes away from McLearson, battling doggedly with the Douglas, when he felt a severe shock against his controls. He could not see what had happened, because of the darkness, but a moment later he felt the plane rolling into a right bank. He realized, then, that some part of the injured wing had given way. He did not know whether a crash would result immediately or not, but he knew that the crash would come, in spite of everything he could do. He experienced a pang of regret for the injured men--they would never see a hospital; if not killed in the crash, they would drown in the angry water into which they would be thrown when the ship lunged in! The girl beside Nick had seen the wing strike the bank and had seen him struggling with the controls since that time. Perhaps she understood something of what was taking place, but that realization produced no display of emotion. She looked at the damaged wing, then at Nick, then down into the blackness beyond which the ugly waters of the flood were concealed. She looked back at Nick--and _smiled_! The Douglas had been rolling into a steeper bank momentarily. Nick knew that it was a matter of a few seconds until it would tilt up and slide off into the ground--unless, by some means, a weight could be placed on the left wing to counteract the decreased lifting surface of the right one. He placed his lips to the girl’s ear and shouted out his lungs above the roar of the motor. “Going to crash!” he yelled. “Climb out on the left wing to balance the ship! Hurry!”