“Terry, I hate this business. You’re tired out! You’re all in and here I am not able to take the controls.”
“Don’t worry, boy, I never felt better in my life. I’m on the top of the world! I could do anything this minute. I’d even feel able to tackle Joe Arnold!”
If Terry had flung this challenge in Joe Arnold’s face, he could not have answered with more speed. For out of the fog bank that hung over the sea, Joe Arnold’s plane had suddenly appeared. It swooped upon them without warning, driving so close that Terry was thoroughly frightened. Two men were in the plane that was bearing down upon her, and desperately she put Skybird into a swift sideslip to avoid a collision.
Joe Arnold was there to fight! And the fight had started!
“Watch out, Terry,” called Allan through the ear phones. “Be careful. Bud Hyslop is at the controls and Joe is in the rear cockpit. He’s got a sub-machine gun. We’re up against the real thing!”
Joe Arnold’s plane was climbing to get above Skybird. Terry sensed his plan and dropped her plane into a tail spin.
Allan gasped. What had happened? Were they falling? Had Terry lost her nerve. Poor girl, she was tired out and wasn’t responsible! The boy tried to speak and ask her what had happened but the whirling plane made him dizzy.
“Terry!” he called, anxiously. But if the girl heard she made no sign. Grim faced and silent she kept her hand on the controls and strained her eyes to watch her enemy’s movements.
Once in a while Allan caught a glimpse of Joe Arnold’s plane circling above them as if he were gloating over their fate. It looked to the boy as if the ocean were running madly up to snatch at them, while the heavens whirled about in a dizzy dance. It seemed that no power on earth could save them. If only he had been able to fly the plane himself, this accident would never have happened! In his brain flashed the thought, “No girl should attempt to fly when there is trouble ahead. That is man’s work!”
But in the midst of his dismay, he felt the plane cease its mad spinning and come back to an even keel. Terry skilfully brought her plane out of the spin and levelled off like an expert stunt flyer. It was not for nothing that she was the daughter of Dick Mapes. She had inherited her father’s air sense.