"It's like driving in a fog," he said over his shoulder. "All right back there now?"
"Yes." Gerrod was answering. "What happened?"
"With nothing to tell which was up and which down, we lost our level and couldn't find it again. I've flown upside down for five minutes, going through a cloud, and didn't know it until my barometer dropped upward. We're all right, but what's happened to the earth?"
Gerrod cautiously made his way to a point beside Davis, who was driving with his eyes glued to the instruments. That incredible vastness into which the machine seemed to be boring was appalling. They seemed to be speeding madly from nothingness into nothingness, with nothing below them and nothing above.
They were alone in a universe of air. Gerrod stared ahead at the cloud bank behind which the sun seemed to be hiding.
"There's the sun, all right. What's our barometer reading?"
"Eight thousand feet."
"Try dipping, by the inclinometer."
Davis did so. Though there was not the slightest change in the appearance of the sky that compassed them all about, the barometer quivered from eight thousand feet to seven, and then to six. Gerrod suddenly uttered an exclamation:
"The sun's coming out!"
The fiery disk of the sun peered slowly from behind the edge of the cloud bank.
"There's another!"
From the opposite side of the cloud bank a second sun could be seen, slowly appearing as had the first. The two suns swam away from the fringe of the cloud and glared at each other.
"I've got it!" Gerrod struck his knee with his hand. "What fools we are!"
"I'm glad we're only fools," said Davis mildly. "I've been afraid we had gone mad. What's happened?"
"Why, the water," Gerrod said excitedly, "the water is perfectly calm and reflects like a mirror. We don't see the sky below us. We see the reflection of the sky. And that isn't a second sun," he pointed; "that's the reflection of the sun."
"Only, the water doesn't reflect like that," said Davis. "At least, not from straight overhead. Open a side window and look directly downward."
Gerrod did so, and exclaimed again:
"I'm right, I tell you! Directly under us I can see the reflection of our plane, flying upside down."
Davis took a quick glance.
"I guess you are right, after all," he admitted, "but the water doesn't reflect like that normally. Something queer must have happened." He was silent a moment, while his eyes swept the distance before them keenly. "Here's another proof you're right. There's the yacht we're looking for."
Far away, its white hull turned to red gold by the first rays of the sun, they saw the yacht, motionless on the water. And in striking corroboration of Gerrod's hypothesis, they saw every line and every spar reflected in the water below.
Davis shifted his course to bear for the yacht and dipped down until he was only five hundred feet above the strange, mirrorlike surface of the sea. Below them they could see the spreading wings of their seaplane reflected from the still water.
They swept up to the yacht and circled above it. The junior pilot unshipped the tiny wireless set of the aëroplane, and it crackled busily for a few moments.
"All right to alight," he reported. "They say nothing has happened all night, but they're still unable to move."
The plane swept around the yacht in a wide circle, coming lower and lower. It was quite impossible to judge where the surface of the water might be, but Davis kept his eye on the deck of the yacht, to get the level from that.
At last he made his decision. Being quite unable to tell exactly where the surface was, he could not land in the usual fashion. He slowed in mid-air until the machine was moving at the lowest speed at which it would keep aloft.
Then, by a jerk of the joy stick, he headed it upward at an angle it was unable to make at that speed. The result was that the machine stalled precisely like a motor car on an upgrade and, with next to no headway, "pancaked," sank vertically—downward.
"Sit tight!" he ordered as the plane sank.
Next moment every one of them clutched wildly at the nearest object to keep himself from falling. The plane had struck the surface, but instead of skimming forward, as its slight remaining headway made it try to do, it was brought to a sudden standstill as if by a mighty brake.
Only a miracle kept it from overturning. Davis opened a window of the cabin and shouted:
"Throw us a rope and haul us alongside!"
The men on the deck of the yacht heard him, and a rope came hurtling through the air, to fall across one of the wings. Davis scrambled out and made it fast. Those on the yacht hauled, but the plane did not move. Half a dozen men grasped the slender line and threw their united weight upon it. The rope broke with a snap.
"What the——" exclaimed Davis in astonishment.
A second rope was thrown. The captain of the yacht called from the bridge:
"Haul a heavy line to you and make that fast!"
Wondering, those on the seaplane obeyed. The sailors on the yacht made the other end of the stouter line fast to a capstan and manned it. Slowly and reluctantly the seaplane was drawn toward the white vessel.
It was Gerrod who looked behind them. Where the float of the seaplane had been he saw a deep depression in the surface of the water, which, as he watched, slowly filled.
"The sea is turned to jelly!" he exclaimed, and he was right.
They found the truth of the matter when they clambered on board the yacht. With the morning, the members of the crew were able to make a more thorough investigation of what had happened.
They lowered boats, and the boats stuck fast. When oars were dipped into the strangely whitened or silvered water the oars were drawn out coated with a sticky, silvery mass of a jellylike substance.
From the deck of the yacht the altered appearance of the sea was as remarkable as from the air. All of the ocean seemed to have been changed to a semisolid mass of silver.
The horizon had vanished or ended into the sky imperceptibly so it could not be distinguished. The captain discussed the matter with them.
"I've never seen anything like this before," he said perplexedly. "I've been on a ship that traveled two hundred miles on a milk sea, but never anything like this."
"What do you think it is?" asked Davis. "Something on the order of a milk sea?"
The captain nodded.
"You know a milk sea is caused by a multitude of little animals that color the water milky white. They're phosphorescent at night. This must be something on that order, only these cluster together until the water is made into a jelly. And they have a queer, slimy smell."
"They aren't phosphorescent," said Davis.
"No, of course not."
Nita Morrison had joined the little group. Her father was beside her, looking rather worried.
"Well," said Nita anxiously, "what's to be done? How are we going to get the yacht free?"
"I'm afraid we aren't," said Davis, smiling. "The telegraphed orders that brought me here told me simply to make an examination and make a report. My plane can't do anything for the yacht, of course."
"Then what——"
"I'll go back and report," Davis explained, "and they'll send boats to try to get in to you people. There doesn't seem to be any immediate danger, and at worst you can all be taken off by aëroplane, if we can rise again from that jelly mess."
Nita wrinkled her small nose.
"I know we aren't in danger," she said, "or at least I know it now, but are we going to have to stay here and smell that horrid smell until the government gets ready to rescue us?"
The odor of the jellylike animalcules was far from pleasant. It was an unclean scent, as of slime dredged from the bottom of the sea.
"Well-l," said Davis thoughtfully, "I dare say we can accommodate two more people. It isn't quite regular, but that's a detail."