But he was sitting rigid a moment later, for the aeroplane had shot upward again with a jerk, mounting higher and higher, until it seemed ready to tip backwards and whirl to earth like the mortally wounded Thunder Bird.
"Fly!" he implored, suddenly petrified with the fear that his companion had lost his senses and was deliberately throwing caution to the winds with hopeless recklessness.
The suspense was only for a second, although that seemed to span an eternity. At the last moment, when the plane seemed ready to tilt and somersault backwards, Fly fairly threw it forward with main force, and, as it plunged swiftly downward, he breathed a reassuring sigh. Below them they saw the carpet of the meadow spread out calm and serene, a pale slender stream winding its peaceful course zigzag between flower-decked banks—gently flowing waters that would have reflected their dash to death and destruction as undisturbedly as it mirrored their safe descent.
Dizzy and faint, but almost sick with joy, they landed gently on the bosom of mother earth. Fly had taken a desperate chance to clear the peaks, and had succeeded.
"Safe!" he groaned, too weak to move from the plane. "I'm so glad, old man," he added huskily. "If anything had happened to you—"
"Why, it's a couple of boys," a cheerful voice was saying just behind them.
Herb and Fly turned to see two men approaching the plane, and, at the same moment, their eyes took in another strange sight. A hundred feet or so behind them stood another plane!
"I must believe it, for I have seen it with my own eyes," continued the speaker, a slender young fellow with a spare blond mustache. "You accomplished a feat there, my boy, that I wouldn't attempt for fifty thousand dollars!"
"Who are you?" asked Fly weakly. Surely this was an apparition. The nerve which had upheld him in the face of imminent danger seemed now deserting him. He felt like falling over in a limp heap, abandoning himself to the sick faintness which made his head swim. He saw the stranger as in a haze, and his voice came to him faintly out of the vast distance.
"I'll get him some water," said the other man. "He looks sick."