Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils. Emerson Alice B.

almost any hour.

      The machine had gathered speed now. She shook terrifically under the throbbing of the heavy motor – a motor which was later found to be too powerful for the two-seated airplanes.

      At fifty miles an hour they rushed westward. Tom was cool now. He was enjoying the new experience. This would be something to tell the girls about. He would wire Ruth that he had made the trip in safety, and she would get the message before she went aboard the Admiral Pekhard, at Brest.

      Why, Brest was right over there – somewhere! Vaguely he could mark the curve of miles upon miles of the French coast. What a height this was!

      And then suddenly the airplane struck a whirlpool and dropped about fifty feet with all the unexpectedness of a similar fall in an express elevator. She halted abruptly and with an awful shock that set her to shivering and rolling like a ship in a heavy sea.

      Tom was all but jolted out of his seat; but the belt held him. He turned, open-mouthed, upon his friend the pilot. But before he could yell a question the airplane shot up again till it struck the solid air.

      “My heavens!” shouted Tom at last. “What do you call that?”