slowly, sluggishly, like a tired bird, but at length the keener air told
him they were a safer distance above the earth.

"Better chance to pick a landing-place from here," thought Barney.

They had scarcely reached this higher level when the engine stopped. No
efforts of the pilot availed to start it. His companions silently watched
Bruce's mute struggles. The Major, a perfect sport, sat stoically in his
place. Barney, knowing that suggestions were useless, also was silent. So
they volplaned slowly downward, every eye strained for a safe
landing-place. They knew what a crash would mean at such a place. Loss of
life perhaps; a wrecked plane at least, then a struggle through the woods
till starvation ended it. They were four hundred miles from the last
trace of white man's habitation.

They had come down to three thousand feet when it became evident that
only rough ridges lay beneath them. No landing-place here, certainly.
They could only hang on as long as possible in the hope the ridges would
give way to level ground. Bruce thanked their luck for the wide-spreading
wings which would impede their fall.

A moment later he groaned, for just ahead of them he saw a rocky ridge
higher than any they had passed over. Here then was the end, he thought.
But the tricky moonlight had deceived him. They cleared those rocks by a
hundred feet and just beyond Bruce gasped and looked again.

"A miracle!" murmured Barney.

"Or a mirage," whispered Bruce.