When the door to the plane was closed and the pilot was sending the plane skimming across the ground Janet began to get a reversion of feelings. It had seemed a great idea when she thought of it—this parachute jump. It had been a new and frightfully brave adventure. But now that the jump was only minutes away she began to wish she was with her friends down on the ground looking up.
She looked at Phyllis who was interestedly peering at the ground below. Phyllis, too, seemed a little paler than usual. Janet touched her friend’s hand. Phyllis’ fingers were like ice.
Janet swallowed with difficulty and placed her lips close to Phyllis’ ear. “I’m getting scared,” she acknowledged.
Phyllis agreed with a grin. She could sympathize with Janet most heartily for if she felt as shaky as Phyllis herself did——
The pilot raised his hand, the signal to his assistant to open the door to the plane. Phyllis pushed Janet into place in the line of jumpers. They had received their instructions on the ground and now anxiously reviewed them in their minds.
Janet came to the edge and looked out. She shut her eyes and held her breath. The ground was so awf’ly far away, but there were others behind her. She couldn’t stop now. Holding firmly to all the courage she possessed Janet stepped off into space.
Phyllis was next. As her friend disappeared she stepped quickly to take Janet’s place. She knew if she hesitated she was lost, so immediately stepped out into the clouds. But she had been too soon. She yanked on the ring of her parachute, and the white folds streamed out behind her.
Phyllis, in her fall, a good distance before she pulled the ripcord, had caught up with Janet and now her parachute became tangled in the folds of her friend’s. The strings wound around each other as each girl tried vainly to pull her respective silken umbrella loose.
“I’ll bet that is Phyllis and Janet,” Madge said nervously. She could not see the identity of the girls up above the spectators, but something told her that fatality hovered over her friends.
“Something like that would happen to them,” Carol agreed with a sigh. “Oh, why don’t they do something!”