“I don’t know what started it,” said Red. “When I got there, Fraine had done for Florsheim entirely, and Van Arden was out. When he saw me, he quit kicking Van Arden and grabbed me. David was a welcome sight. Fact is,” he suddenly sobered, “he would have done for me, Davie. I never saw anything like his strength. You’d have thought I was a baby. Why, he was choking me and trying to tap me with the wrench, all at the same time.” “Have more tea,” Dulcie shuddered. “And you, too, David.” “Thanks, no. I’m all bucked up,” said David, and left them to go forward. “Take the wheel, David, while I see how Fraine is,” Mr. Hammond said, as David came again into the control room. He patted the boy reassuringly on the shoulder as he went back toward the cabins. David stared out into the deepening gloom. The afternoon was nearly gone. A strange darkness was beginning to surround them. The ship was again running with the wind, not smoothly but very swiftly. They were making nearly ninety miles an hour. He hoped the wind would hold behind them, but he felt little cross currents already. As he watched, he saw far ahead a swirl of black tossing clouds rise from the cloud floor below, as though picked up in giant fragments which wove and blended into a thick tossing barrier. Mr. Hammond returned. “Well, David,” he said, “it looks as if it was up to you, now. Things are pretty bad in there. Doc says there must be a piece of bone pressing on that head wound of the captain’s or a tiny splinter working around inside, and that blow he got at Lakehurst about finished him. Doc has given him a shot of morphine, and he is asleep. He says an operation will fix him up. “Poor Florsheim has a cracked skull, and needs hospital care as soon as we can make Friedrichshafen. Van Arden is still groggy. He will be all right again in a couple of days. You will have to take charge of the ship, David. It’s a chance for you to show your mettle. Show what the school at Ayre can do. I’m back of you, but while I command the ship, you steer; understand?” David’s eyes remained on the black curtain ahead. “Yes, sir,” he said. “And if those are your orders, sir, I am going to cut down now to a lower altitude, and find better weather. There’s a bad blow ahead. See the lightning?” “Pretty bad, way ahead there,” said Mr. Hammond, “but you must not try going down. Heavens, no! Don’t you know that Captain Fraine was all against that? Go up, if you must, but not down.” “It will be safer below.” “I can’t allow it, David. We have got to go by precedent, and not experiment, now.” “It is not experiment with me,” David argued, forgetting in his anxiety that Mr. Hammond was his commander. “I have done it on trial flights, and it worked perfectly.” He watched the approaching cloud bank. “I have got to do it.”