you sick?” she asked.
“I’m surprised I’m not, I always get so seasick on a boat,” Mrs. Mallow replied. “But I certainly have no appetite. The ground has disappeared.”
Doris glanced below and saw that the plane was traveling over a sea of milk-white clouds.
“It’s raining down there,” she told Mrs. Mallow. “Aren’t we lucky to be up here in the sun?”
Mrs. Mallow’s reply was a meaning look and an emphatic shake of the head.
She was not yet an aviation enthusiast.
Doris thought it best under the circumstances to keep silent about the pilots’ concern over the sluggish response the ship paid to the controls, and philosophically ate her food.
“If we should have to land—good night!” she thought. “The ground is out of sight.”
As if to add to her worries the airplane suddenly yawed to the left, bringing a howl from Marshmallow. He had just lifted a cupful of iced tea to his lips and the unexpected motion sent the icy fluid cascading over his chest.
Mrs. Mallow and Kitty were so overcome with the ludicrous accident they did not see the pilots’ evident alarm.
Doris saw Speary turn the controls over to Dave and rise from his seat.
He was smiling his sideways grin as he entered the passenger compartment, holding to the backs of the seats to steady himself, because the ship was again swaying and dipping in the air.
“Going to get something from the baggage box I forgot,” he called out cheerfully, but Doris saw that his troubled eyes belied thfe look on his face.
“He’s not going to get anything from the baggage compartment at all,” she told herself. “He isn’t the kind to forget anything.”
Both Pete and Doris were destined shortly to be very much surprised at the unconscious truth of his excuse.
Pete pulled the small door of the luggage compartment open, and crouching, crawled into the opening which led into the cramped quarters of the airplane’s tail.
A moment later Doris thought she heard voices coming from the tail.
“My ears must be deceiving me. It’s the noise of the motors,” she thought.
She listened more sharply, however, and ‘was convinced that Pete was shouting behind the closed little door.
“He must be in trouble,” Doris said to herself, her heart skipping a beat. She arose and reached for the knob of the door.
Before she could open it, the door was kicked ajar from within and Pete’s feet appeared in the opening. He crawled out backwards, slowly and with many halts, as if he were hurt.
At last he emerged, all but one arm, and when he yanked that back Doris gasped in amazement. Pete’s hand gripped the tangled black locks of a sullen-faced youth who was kicking and struggling.
“A stowaway!” Pete yelled. “Can you beat that? No wonder this ship handled as if it were waterlogged. Who are you?”
He jerked the stowaway upright, and waved a clenched fist under the youth’s nose.
“You don’t dare touch me!” the black-eyed young man shouted. “You don’t know who I am!”
“Don’t dare? Say, do you know what we do with hitchhikers? We tie a parachute to ’em and toss ’em overboard!” Pete raged.
The youth did not even look frightened, but jeered at his captor, knocking Pete’s hand aside and tossing the hair out of his eyes. “If I go overboard, you go with me!”
Temper flared in Pete’s eyes like a flame, and he drew back his fist to strike the impudent stowaway. He was not able to do this, however, for just then the plane lurched and all its passengers had to catch their balance.
At the unexpected lurching, Pete’s face betrayed a look of great anxiety.
“Oh!” exclaimed Doris. “You’d better go back to your seat. Everything will be all right here.”
“I’ll go take a look,” said Pete hastily, “if you’re sure you can manage all right.”
“I’ll call you if he gets troublesome,” called Doris after him.
Directly after Pete had departed the stowaway, his fists clenched, made a step toward Doris. Instantly Wags, who had taken a brave stand at his mistress’s side barked violently, dashed toward the fellow, plunged his teeth into one of his legs, and the intruder was forced back.
“Good old Wags,” said Doris in relief, “you’re a better protection than a pistol ever would be!”
CHAPTER VII
An Unscheduled Landing
There were now gaps in the clouds below. Pete, again piloting the airplane, pushed its nose down into one of the ragged holes in the vapory sea.
Dave left the compartment and came to star’d beside Doris, silently contemplating the sullen captive.
Turning to the stowaway, he saw his torn trouser leg. Doris explained how Wags had come to her assistance when she was on guard. Then, stooping to the dog, Dave patted him on the head and said:
“Good old Wags, you did your part handsomely,” at which words the little dog wagged its tail so hard and fast it seemed as if it would fall off.
Doris resumed her seat and watched from the window at the uprushing ground. Frequently great blobs of gray vapor swirled against the window as a fragment of cloud swept by.
The airplane was cutting across rolling ranges of hills, between which broad valleys were checkered with farms. Pete swung his craft into one of the valleys and his passengers could now distinguish the ducks and chickens that fled before the shadow of this gigantic hawk-like plane.
A great hay-field, with four or five large stacks standing for winter fodder in the middle, seemed Pete’s choice for a landing spot.
The roar of the motors halted. The ground rushed up nearer and nearer. Pete nosed his craft up a little, and the great metal bird touched the ground, bumped along for a few hundred feet, and came to a halt.
“I’m still deaf,” Doris exclaimed. “My ears are ringing.”
Dave flashed her a smile, and as Pete strode up and grasped the stowaway by the collar the young copilot unfastened the door in’the side of the plane and leaped to the ground.
Pete pushed his struggling captive into Dave’s muscular arms and jumped out himself.
“Now, young fellow, give an account of yourself,” he ordered.
Doris dropped from the plane to the drenched grass.
“He may be one of the thieves,” she whispered to Dave.
He nodded.
“Let
