“Then we’ll never come back in twelve hours,” announced Alan decisively. “Unless—” and he paused.
“Unless we make no stop in London—or fly faster. But say!” he exclaimed suddenly, “How’d you figure there’s a mistake? How’d you know it’s eleven hundred and sixty miles to Fogo? I checked those figures. If the distances are right you can bet it’s nine hundred and ninety-two miles.”
“Did you ever calculate the distance from New York to London on a great circle?”
“Sure. It’s three thousand two hundred and eighteen and one-tenth miles.”
“That was by latitude and longitude, wasn’t it?”
“What did the same kind of calculation give you between Fogo and London?”
“Two thousand, fifty-eight and one-tenth miles,” answered Alan, the figures at his tongue’s end.
“The difference is eleven hundred and sixty miles. _That’s_ the distance Fogo is from New York. The chart shows nine hundred and ninety-two miles. Where’d you get those figures?”
Alan indicated to Roy to take the wheel. Stepping to the table and sailing chart he studied the latter some minutes. When he arose he noticed that a mist was perceptible even in the pilot room. As he resumed his place at the wheel he growled:
“We did this first leg of our flight on tangents with parallel rulers. We got the distances from the map scale of miles with dividers. I reckon the dividers were loose. That’s all.”
“That’s hardly navigation,” said Roy with a half smile.
Off St. John’s, New Brunswick, the mainland should have been in plain view but the outer buoy in the harbor, over which the _Flyer_ passed, was made out with difficulty. But, when its vague shape was at last sighted the hour was noted as five fifty-one P. M., and the course was immediately altered to E. by N. The fog was now gathering fast and the rocks and trees of the rugged New Brunswick coast soon disappeared from sight. Watching closely for Cape Chignecto Alan headed the airship for Amherst at the tip of the Bay of Fundy, seventy-three miles distant.
A problem now confronted the pilot. The fog soon thickened to a mist that resembled a drizzling rain. The flight of the aeroplane hurled this chilling vapor through the pilot room. Alan was debating what to do. It was possible to ignore the land beneath and to begin the long compass flight to London at once. But it was wisdom to check their flight, as long as possible, with points beneath. In the fog these could not be distinguished at the height they were flying.