As he dropped back into his compartment, he looked down on the field. A group of men had marked a cross with wide strips of cloth in the middle of the field, showing the best place to land. In front of the Operations Office was a little group of people beside the ambulance, with a red cross on its side. As he looked farther along, he saw the red and the polished nickel of a fire truck. Men were hurrying to different parts of the field with what he knew to be fire-extinguishers.
The stage was set for the try.
As they circled around, heading into the wind, he felt Dad throttle back the engine and the long, slow glide to the field was started.
The spectators on the ground were no more tense than Kiwi, through the long seconds of this dive to uncertainty.
The silence, after the engine had been throttled down, was broken only by the rush of the wind through the struts. He braced himself. He felt Dad tip the plane over so that the left wheel would touch first. As the plane lost momentum, the other axle dropped, caught in the ground, and with a terrific crunching of metal they spun around and came to a stop.
He heard cheers and voices and saw Dad’s scared face come through the trap door in the bottom.
“Are you all right, Kiwi?”
Dad lifted him down with shaking arms, and they were at once surrounded by a group of people slapping Dad on the back and telling him what a wonderful job he had done.
They looked the precious plane over. Some damage had been done, but nothing that could not be fixed within a few days. One of the wing-tips had been slightly torn and they would need a new propeller.