"But most important of all," continued Fly, "we've laid the Thunder Bird low—we've done something for your father."
"Now the next thing is for you to teach us all to aviate," laughed the southerner. "But I don't believe I can ever handle a machine as you do."
"Sure," exclaimed Fly. "Why you—" but he stopped short with an exclamation of horror that fairly froze his companion's blood. At the same moment, Herb was conscious that something—he knew not what—had happened. The loud insistent voice of the machinery was abruptly stilled.
Looking perplexedly at Fly, he saw great drops of perspiration starting out on the young pilot's forehead. "The motor is dead," he breathed, his throat and lips going dry.
For a moment Herb's heart seemed to stop in sympathy with the mechanism that had failed them.
"Can't you volplane," he said giddily.
"Rocks, peaks, crags," sputtered Fly. Oh, if he were only over the smooth meadow. But to volplane here would mean certain death. As it was, he was sliding along at a perceptibly lessening speed. Any moment the machine might balk and rear, hurling them both to destruction.
But Fly was plucky and after the first shock he recovered his nerve, bending every energy of mind and body to maintain his balance. To keep high enough and steady enough until they left the mountains was his sole endeavor. After that, he felt confident that he could volplane with safety into the meadow. Even now he could see this haven of inviting green tantalizingly near at hand—and yet so far away. Grudgingly he was obliged to slant, else the machine would rear and wrest the control from him. But the slightest incline was too much now, for it meant landing on the rocks.
Though a fever raged in his brain, he was rapidly calculating. Someway he must save Herb. That was his predominant thought.
"I'll do it," he suddenly exclaimed through his shut teeth, at the same moment swooping down with such rapidity that his companion's head was jerked violently back, and he grabbed tight hold of his seat. Confident that the end had come, the southerner resolutely shut his eyes and relaxed.