Page 202 (1/1)

And with a fresh grip on the wheel, head well forward, every sense alert and keen to ht arise, to battle with cross-currents, "air-holes," or any other vortices swirling up out of those unknown depths, he skimmed the Pauillac fair toward the lip of the e he could see conclusively they were not dealing here with a canyon like the Yosemite or like any other he had ever seen or heard of in the old days

There was positively no bottoe and beyond that--nothing

Nowhere any sign of an opposite bank; nowhere the faintest trace of land Far, far below, even a few faint clouds showed floating there as if in ether terrible Not that Stern feared height No, it was the unreality of the experience, the inexplicable character of this yawning edge of the world that al exercise of will-power could he hold the biplane to her course His every instinct was to veer, to retreat back to solid earth, and land soet the contact of reality

But Stern resisted all these iht to the lip of the vast nothingness

Now they were over!

"My God!" he cried, stunned by the realization of this thing "Sheer space! No bottom anywhere!"

For all at once they had shot, as it were, out into a void which seemed to hold no connection at all with the earth they noere quitting

Stern caught a gli up to within a hundred yards of the edge, then of se red sand that bordered the gap--sand and rocks, barren as though sorowth along the very brink

Then all slid back and away The red-ribbed wall of the great chasm, shattered and broken as by some inconceivable disaster, some cosmic cataclysm, fell away and away, doard, diradually into a blue haze, then vanished utterly

And there below lay nothingness--and nothingness stretched out in front to where the sight lost itself in pearly vapors that overdilanced at Stern as the Pauillac sped true as an arrow in its flight, out into this strange and incomprehensible vacuity

Just a shade paler now he seelister of sweat-drops studded his forehead His jaas set, set hard; she could see the powerful maxillary le of the bone And she understood that, for the first tiun, the reatest of all the mysteries they had been called upon to face