"Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "I crowed too soon! That's the petrol tank—bullet hole! It'll leak out, and we can't stop the leak!"
"If you went down right away, would it all get out before you reached the ground?"
"No, but they'll catch us if we go down here. Can't do that."
"It's the only chance!" said Frank. "Isn't it?"
"You're right. I'll take it. Good boy! You don't mind the risk?"
"No!" said Frank.
Then they were rushing down. It was a desperate venture. Greene pointed for a field, but in the darkness the risk of capture by the Germans was the least that they faced.
Greene had cut out his engine; there was too much danger of an explosion, with the leaking petrol, to allow the spark to continue. He had to volplane down this time, not as a quick way of descending, but as the only means of preventing a disastrous fall. Even in broad daylight there is always risk in landing with a dead motor. Here, in the darkness and with unknown country below, the risk was multiplied a hundred times.
All that Greene knew with any certainty was that he was over country broken up into fields. The fences were numerous, there were ditches, too, and obstructions of all sorts. The larger ones he could see readily enough, when he got close; it was the smaller ones that threatened the real danger.
But if the danger was great, Greene was a master of his craft. He swooped downward. Then, when he was scarcely a hundred feet up, he caught the machine with a fine show of skill and held it, for a moment, on an even keel.