Unconsciously he patted his machine, and Ted knew what it would mean to him to lose it.
“Perhaps—perhaps you can bring it back,” he ventured.
“Sure thing!” Ace gave his spirits a toss. “Anyway, here goes!—Good-by.”
“What’s the idea?” yelled Ted aggrievedly. “Going to leave your side-kick behind?” and he climbed into the observer’s place.
“Coming!” Ace wirelessed the girl. “Be on meadow—we’ll pick you up.”
“If our propellers don’t go on strike,” he added to himself. Still he knew he could slow to 80 miles an hour and pancake down. He would first circle well away from the fire, with its super-heated air column, till they came to the gorge of the Kawa. There would be a narrow zone, he figured, of less destructive atmosphere, the air channel over the 2,000 foot canyon.
With a peek at castor oil and gasoline, they started, looping and curving straight to 15,000 feet, then Westward, away from the fire zone. Though the day was fair, the spiral of hot air rising above the flaming forest kept them pitching and lurching in a short chop that made Ted look green, and gave even Ace a cold feeling at the pit of his stomach.
The sea of snow-clad peaks slid by beneath them, the sun flashing from the granite slopes. Rising and falling, rising and falling in the rough, upper air, they felt as if they were in a swift elevator. A cloud to the West looked like a fleecy carpet beneath them. The West wind kept swinging the machine till Ace had continually to bring it back in line with the rapids of the Kawa which was his objective point.
It took but instants, though it seemed ages to both boys. Now it was time to race quivering down the gorge of canyon-cooled air. Would they make it against the devastating breath of the flames!—Now they were looking straight down into that picture of red and—black. Rosa, watching frantically from the wee patch of green which was her mountain meadow, looked like a dot with waving arms. The air became a stretch of dizzy rapids. The combined roar of the flames and the river beneath nearly drowned the nearer sound of the descending ’plane.