zero, when he left. Gone about halfway, his motor froze, and he brought his machine down in a ten-foot snowdrift. A biting wind was sweeping over the desolate white landscape. It was cold, and the thought of facing a mush on snowshoes to the nearest camp, some twelve miles distant, was still more chilling. But Bondurant determined to set out to get assistance.
"When I reached the camp I was black," he tells us. "My nose and ears were frozen early in the trip. Then, when I took snow to rub over my ears and nose, my hands froze. The whole of the underside of my face was stiff and black, frozen. My feet froze, and I reached my destination more like a solid icicle than a human being. I was stiff for a week."
But he got a crew together and the ten of them went out with tents and a small stove and all the necessary tools to bring the big ship out of the snowdrift. The weather had become warmer. It was now only thirty-five degrees below zero. After several days of digging and warming the engine, Bondurant flew his ship on to its destination.
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At another time he was flying over a number of small lakes in a hydroairplane, which had a wing spread of seventy-four feet. The gears meshed, and he glided down to a small lake. Getting in was quite a feat. but it was accomplished by means of sliding and slipping. Repairs were quickly made, and the situation looked over. It was a small lake, blind at one end and at the other end a big cliff hid a curve where the water flowed over a narrow route into another lake, a little bigger than that where he now was floating.
Paddling the plane to the farthest shore from the gully connecting the two lakes, Bondurant started the motor. She roared in that still wilderness, and her echo rolled between the cliffs. Then, giving her the gun, she taxied for the opening, but would not rise. Again and again the attempt was made with the full load the machine was carrying. At last, when it looked as if he would be stranded through lack of gasoline, she rose, and with one wing in the water as he banked into the curve, the heavy plane made the passage, landing on the lake on the other side, from where it was easier to take off and sail to the nearest gasoline cache.
