Linda Carlton's Ocean Flight

"Oh, I'm so cold!" complained Louise. "If only we had a fire!"

"My matches!" remarked Linda, regretfully. "My matches that I packed so carefully! A whole box… Well, next time I'll see that they are in my pocket. Lucky we have our flash-lights – and no sprained ankles. Come on, Lou, we must walk, or we'll freeze to death."

"But where are we going?"

"Anywhere – to keep warm with the exercise, and maybe happen on some hut or house. We daren't sleep tonight, Lou! Oh, if, we only had those blankets!"

"And those baked beans!"

"Shucks!" exclaimed Linda. "Why didn't I think to throw some stuff out before we left the plane! All the mail carriers do. If they have to jump, they drop their mail bags first."

"Too late now to think of that. But wasn't it lucky we had something to eat at the Convent?"

"It surely was. I wish we had eaten twice as much."

With their arms tightly linked together, the girls were pressing forward now at an even pace, as if they had cheerfully made up their minds to walk all night long. Sometimes they would step into thick piles of dried leaves, but otherwise the ground was hard, except for an inch or so of snow. Often they encountered ice, and their feet grew numb with the cold.

Louise, who had not wanted Linda to take the unknown course, had said nothing about the cause of the accident, for fear of hurting her chum's feelings. But Linda's mind had been busily working on the explanation ever since the tank went dry.

"Lou," she said finally, as they walked on through the darkness, "I think I have the explanation."

"What explanation? How to get out of these woods?"

"No, no. Of the reason why our gas ran out. I should have had enough to get to Syracuse. But do you remember hearing a plane land near to ours, while we were in the Convent?"

"Yes, of course. We both saw it."

"Well, do you know what I believe? I think that was Bess Hulbert, in the Flying Club's Moth – and it was she who was following us all the way to the Convent."

"Linda!" cried Louise, in amazement. "But how could she ever know we were here? Not that I'd put it past her – but how could she possibly find out, or guess what we were up to?"

"I don't know, except that she may have seen us – or our names on the hotel register at Plattsburg. People who are committing crimes are always on the watch, you know, expecting to be caught."

"How could she ever dump out our gas, in so short a time?"

"She didn't. She put a little hole in the gas tank, probably, so that the gas would leak out slowly. That would be a much meaner thing to do than to cut a strut, or injure the propeller, because either of those things would keep us from going up in the air without discovering it, and we wouldn't learn our danger from a leak without flying a while. Besides, whatever happened would happen when we were some distance away – so that she couldn't possibly be blamed! And it would be too late to do anything."

"The sneak!" denounced Louise, feeling almost hot for a second in her anger. "You're right, Linda – I'm sure you are! But really, it was intended murder!"

"Probable murder – if we couldn't make a landing or jump. But she thinks we are so inexperienced that we couldn't do either… Yes, I really believe Miss Hulbert thinks we're dead now!"

"And won't she get fooled!" exulted Louise. "Once we get back to civilization, we'll do plenty to her!"

"If we get back to civilization," said Linda, with the first note of despair creeping into her voice. Their feet were so cold, they began to ache dreadfully, and the woods were as dense and as hopeless as when they first began to walk. They slackened their pace, until Louise's feet fairly seemed to drag. She stopped abruptly.

"I just can't go on, Linda," she sighed. "My feet hurt so terribly!"

"I know," answered her companion, sympathetically. "We might take off our shoes and rub them with snow. But if we once stop, we'll never be able to start again – and then we'll surely freeze."

It was a gruesome alternative; they looked at each other in dismay.

"Let's go very slowly, and hang on to each other," urged Linda. "The night can't last forever, and the sunshine will bring warmth."

"It's the longest night I ever knew," said Louise, drearily. "But morning will be worse, because we'll be that much hungrier."

Linda pressed her hand; there was no use trying to cheer the other girl with hopes, that she was in no mood to believe. So they went on doggedly.

For perhaps half an hour they continued in silence; then once again Louise stopped abruptly, her hand rigid in Linda's. There were footsteps behind them!

"A bear!" she whispered, in fright.

Pulling her cautiously aside, Linda broke off a stick from a tree, and turned about to face the enemy. There was no use trying to run – why they could hardly hobble. And in the darkness, what hope was there of finding a tree to climb?

To her intense amazement, she saw nothing, and she dared not turn on her flashlight. Tensely she waited, until a shot rang out in the woods and broke the stillness of the night. A gun at least meant a human hand, and both girls immediately let out a piteous cry of "Help!"

"Yo – ho!" came the welcome, answering reply!

Chapter XI

Prisoners

When the shot of the gun rang through the woods, the startled girls heard scampering feet behind them, and knew that the animal, whatever it was, had been frightened away. Again they had had a marvelous escape, for they might have been wounded by the unseen hunter's gun. What irony it would have been, to jump from an airplane in parachutes, only to be killed by a human hand!

Desperately they clung to each other, satisfied now by the answering call that there would be more shots until they were located. Rescue was surely at hand; the question now arose: what sort of human being had them at his mercy?

They remained motionless, waiting for their fate, as the footsteps came nearer. At last they were able to distinguish the shaggy outline of a man in a fur coat.

"Who's there?" he called.

Both girls breathed a sigh of relief, as they heard the words in English. Surely they were safe now!

"Two girls – from a wrecked airplane… Lost," replied Linda.

"Oh, can you give us shelter, please?" begged Louise.

The stranger came towards them, and they looked into the face of a middle-aged man, rough and hard, but civilized.

"Yes. You can come into my lodge… This is a cold night to be lost in these northern woods."

"Dreadful!" shivered Louise. "We thought we were done for."

"What happened to your plane?"

"We sprung a leak in our gas tank. We had to jump, and it went up in flames."

"Too bad," muttered the man.

Nothing more was said for a few minutes, and the girls walked painfully on, guided by their companion. At last they came to a small cabin, with an oil lamp lighted inside. It looked like Heaven to Linda and Louise.