Desperately deciding that she must take a chance for once, she dropped her autogiro several hundred feet. The relief was immediate; the winds were far less intense, and her progress became more rapid. But she must watch carefully, she warned herself; in this obscurity she could not tell how near to the ground she was.
At that moment she was far from the earth, just as her altimeter intimated, for she was flying over a valley. But she could not know that it was a valley—at least not until it was too late! Even to Linda’s watchful eyes the disaster came suddenly. In an instant the mountain seemed to be rushing at her, with the same inevitable force that Ed Tower’s car had run into Helen. With a gasp of horror she shut off her power, praying that the rotors would break the fall. The plane hovered a moment, for it had not been going fast, and began to descend on the side of that mountain. But it was too close to it; a moment later it crashed against the hill, with an impact that threw both girls from their cockpits.
Linda jumped to her feet immediately, unharmed except for some bruises, and dashed over to her companion who was lying in the bushes, still unable to understand what had happened.
“Are you hurt, Helen?” Linda cried, fearfully. How dreadful it was that everything seemed to happen to this poor child! Now, if some bones were broken, in this lonely place far away from doctors and hospitals, there would be little chance for the girl’s recovery. Linda shivered with fear as she knelt down beside her.
But Helen sat up and smiled reassuringly.
“No, I’m all right, Linda,” she said. “But what happened?”
“We bumped into a mountain,” returned Linda, laughing in sheer relief. “It’s this awful weather—I couldn’t see where I was going.”
“Is the ‘Ladybug’ wrecked?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t examined her. I was too much scared about you.”
Helen stood up.