He could travel faster, if he had to, but he did not want to drive his ship as fast on the return trip as he had driven it in coming west. It was too hard on the ship. So he watched his instruments and held his plane to the speed indicated.
All the while he climbed. Up he went steadily. From eight thousand feet he climbed to nine, then ten. Still the fog was unbroken. But his engine worked marvelously in the heavy air and he kept his ship nosing higher and higher. Suddenly, at eleven thousand feet, he shot up above the fog. The night was clear as crystal. Above him twinkled innumerable stars. With a deep sigh of relief Jimmy climbed a little higher, then straightened out and rode on level keel. Below him spread endless masses of cloud, more wonderful than an ocean, dimly lighted by the stars above. So long as he could ride above the fog his trip was now an easy one. He had only to follow his compass and the radio beacon. The difficulty would come when he had to drop down through the fog and make a landing.
While Jimmy was thus fighting both to insure his safety and to gain his goal, agencies of which he was not aware were also at work to try to make his progress safe. Hardly had Jimmy left the ground at the Cleveland Airport before Beverly Graham hurried into the radio room.
“Sparks,” he said to the radio man, “I wish you would send a message on your printer saying that Jimmy Donnelly, flying for the New York _Morning Press_, just left here, heading for Long Island. The message will reach caretakers at beacons all along the route. Tell all caretakers to report his progress to me as he goes over their beacons. Nobody else is flying east at this time that we know of and it’s very doubtful if anybody else will go over the route to-night.”
The wireless man turned to his printer and began to pound out the message on the keyboard. But the machine on which he was writing, though it somewhat resembled a typewriter, was not a typewriter at all, but an electric printing or teletype machine, which reproduced the message on similar machines at Bellefonte and Hadley Field and other stations as fast as it was written. In no time, therefore, these two Air Mail stations and the caretakers at various landing fields, knew that Jimmy was flying east in the fog. Thus as Jimmy passed over Mercer and Clarion and other points on the airway in western Pennsylvania his progress was promptly reported to his friend, the chief forecaster.