The taciturn steersman turned and smiled but said nothing.  Ethel noted carefully the equipment of the driver’s box.  It was a duplicate throughout of the dummy steering gear with which she had practiced in the ship’s gymnasium.  One conspicuous addition, however, was an object illuminated by the small glow lamp that had attracted her attention.  This proved to be chart or map mounted at either end on short rollers.  As the girl watched it, she perceived that it moved slowly.  A red line was drawn across the map and hovering over this was the tip of a metal pointer.  A compass and a watch were mounted at one side of the chart case.

Ethel watched the chart creep back on its rollers and reasoned that the pointer indicated the location of the aeroplane.  She wondered how the movement of the chart was regulated with that of the plane.  Finally she decided to ask Komoru.

“By the landmarks and the time,” he said.  “Do you see that blue coming in on the northeast corner of the map?”

“Yes.”

“Well, watch it.”

After a few minutes of waiting the words “Gulf of Mexico” rolled out upon the chart.  “Why, that can’t be,” said Ethel, “we just left the Pacific Ocean.”

“But we have crossed the Isthmus of Tehauntepec,” replied Komoru; “it is only a hundred miles wide.”

His companion looked over the side of the car and to the front and. to the right, she could see by the perfectly flat horizon that they were approaching water.

“The map is unrolling too fast,” said Komoru, as the pointer stood over the edge of the indicated water—­and he pushed back the little lever on the clock mechanism that rolled the chart.  “We have a little head wind,” he added.

Ethel resumed her seat and sat musing for a half hour or so.  Komoru looked around and called to her.

“Look over to your left,” he said.  “The lights of Vera Cruz.  We are making better time now,” he added, again adjusting the regulator on the clock work.

The driver contemplated his compass carefully and shifted his course a few points to the right.  Ethel settled in her bamboo cage and pulled her aviation cap down tightly to shield her face and ears from the wind pressure.

For hours they sat so—­the girl’s heart throbbing with awe, wonder and fear; the man unemotional and silent, a steady, firm hand on the wheel, his feet on the engine controls and his goggled eyes glancing critically at compass or watch or out into the starlit waste of the night, disturbed only by the whirl and shadow of other planes which with varying speed passed or were passed, as the aerial host rushed onward.  There were only small tail lights, one above and one below the main plane, to warn following drivers against collision.

* * *

With her head bent low upon her knees, Ethel at length fell into a doze.  She was aroused by Komoru’s calling, and straightening up with a start, she arose and leaned forward over the driver.  Komoru was looking intently at the scroll chart.  In a moment she designed the cause of his interest, for there had rolled across the forward surface of the chart the outline of a coast.