“Look out, Barry!” Chick Enders yelled. “The crazy galoot is going to zoom right under our nose ... and I’m a dodo if it isn’t Glenn Crayle!”
Barry gritted his teeth as Crayle’s fuselage rose up just ahead of his greenhouse.
“Cut the engines, Hap!” he ordered. “I’ll try to hold our nose up till that fool is clear. If only we had a trifle more airspeed....”
Hap was muttering savagely under his breath. Chick Enders was gripping his gun, obviously yearning to pour bullets into Crayle’s back. Abruptly, however, the little bombardier relaxed. Crayle’s tail assembly was pulling clear—and Chick had just caught a glimpse of the rear gunner’s scared face.
“Slap on the coal, Hap!” Barry cried, as his plane’s nose tilted sharply upward. “We’re going into a spin.”
The twin engines bellowed. Hap “revved” them up to the limit, but the spin continued. Instantly there flashed through Barry’s mind all his instructor at Randolph had told him to do in such a situation. His hands and feet now moved automatically, applying just the right control at the right moment.
Four thousand feet above sea level he pulled out and leveled off on the compass course.
“Okay—take over, will you, Hap,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “I’m tired out.”
His big co-pilot was gazing upward through the plastic window. Hap’s face was a deep red.
“Wait till that cockeyed ape gets out of sight, can you, Barry?” he asked in a choked voice. “He’s stunting now—and waggling his wings at us. If I took over nothing could keep me from giving him a dose of his own medicine. I’d probably crash us both.”