They climbed out of the cockpits, carrying their box of provisions in their arms, when they saw a sight that made them stand breathless in horror. About five hundred yards away they beheld a great mass of flame, shooting up to the sky.
“It’s a plane!” exclaimed Linda. “It must be the one we almost crashed against.”
With one thought in mind, the girls both dropped their box and started to run. Oh, if a human being were caged in that burning cockpit! It was too dreadful to think of—a death like that.
But before they had covered fifty yards of the intervening distance, they saw a parachute floating down to the earth. They stopped instantly, waiting in breathless suspense. Suppose it were Sprague, with his supply of chloroform? Tensely alert, Linda pulled her revolver from her belt.
But it was not Sprague. The man who floated down let out a cry of horror when he recognized Linda and Dot. Though why he should be so horrified, the girls did not know.
The man was Bertram Chase!
He disentangled himself from his ropes, glanced at his burning plane, and let out a groan.
“You!” he cried. “And to think, I almost killed you!”
“You couldn’t help that,” said Linda gently. “It seems we almost did for you, too. If you hadn’t jumped.”
“That wasn’t your fault. My plane caught on fire somehow—a leak, I think, in the gas feed. That’s why I jumped.... But that had nothing to do with you.... But I actually tried to force you down—the second time, I mean. The first was accident.”