The Black Stallion and Flame Read Free

what they faced, the navigator decided.
    “I want it straight,” Alec answered. He was looking out the window rather than at the man. The heavy overcast had obliterated even the green light now. All he could see was the trailing edge of the wing slicing through the murk. It made him think of a knife slicing through the heavy icing of a birthday cake. And that made him think of home, when he was trying not to.
    Finally he said, “What you mean is that we’re going to ditch. Is that it?”
    The navigator nodded and his eyes remained on the youth’s face. “We will if we don’t find some land soon. We have gas left for less than an hour and we don’t even know where we are. Our radio communication system has been knocked out.”
    “Isn’t there any clear air space beneath this stuff?”
    “There wasn’t a while ago. No bottom. No top either since we’re not pressurized. The skipper will try again soon, I guess. You’ll know when he does.”
    “The wind seems to have died down some.”
    “As I said, I think we’ve seen the worst of it. There’s more body to the air now. She’s handling better.”
    The big engines were no longer straining but growling in defiance of the storm.
    “Maybe we’ll be lucky and find something below,”Alec suggested hopefully. “I-I mean something besides water.”
    “Maybe we will. We’ve been flying long enough to be over something more solid by now.” The navigator unfastened his seat belt and stood up, still holding the other’s gaze. He decided that whatever happened, the kid could take care of himself if given half a chance. He only hoped they’d be able to give him that much of a start. There might be waves as thick and high as mountains.
    “If we do have to ditch,” he went on, “it shouldn’t be too bad. And our rafts will be loaded with everything we’ll need until they pick us up.”
    Alec wanted to ask who “they” might be but didn’t.
    “I’ll tell the others now,” the navigator said, moving away.
    “But what about the horses?” Alec called after him. “What can we do for them?”
    The navigator turned back, a grim smile on his lips. “That’s almost funny,” he said. “I asked the skipper the same thing and he laughed at me—because there’s nothing in this world we can do for them except hope they get a chance to swim for it.”
    Alec’s eyes turned to Henry Dailey as the navigator went over to speak to him. He remembered Henry’s words at takeoff.
“Altitude is for the birds, Alec, an’ if the good Lord had meant us to fly he’d have provided us with wings. But I’ll go along with you in agreein’ that a night’s flight to the U.S. is a lot easier on a horse than a week’s trip by boat. So I’ll jus’ sweat this one out as I’ve had to do before. I won’t shirk my chores but don’t think for a moment I’m goin’ to be good company. I’m not. I’m goin’ to crawl into the shell that I’ve spent some sixty-odd years growin’ and stay there until we land
.
    “I’ll be figurin’ out how we might have won some of those big European classics if the Black hadn’t picked up his bad stone bruise. Oh, I’m not really worried about him none. He’s gallopin’ all right an’ I guess he could go on all day long if he had to. It’s not that he’s bad but he’s not quite right. I want to give him a lot of time to get over his trouble. You don’t take chances with this kind of horse. So I’m goin’ to plan what’s in store for him when he’s sound again. I’ll have a ball, all right, an’ before I know it we’ll be across the Atlantic.”
    Now Alec looked at his friend and wondered just how protective Henry’s shell really was. It was difficult to close one’s ears to the sound of the propellers and the wind screaming in the night, difficult not to listen to the uneven pounding of the engines and to ignore the severe thuds and jolts followed by the sickening drops.
    Henry sat with his eyes almost closed, the