The flying reporter realized fully the danger of going to sleep at the controls and used every power at his command to ward off the sleepiness. He beat his arms against his body, stamped his feet on the floor of the cockpit and even stood up so that the icy blast from the propeller beat against his cheeks. The remedies would be effective for four or five minutes. Then he would feel himself slipping again. Each time it was harder to arouse himself to the task of moving his arms and legs, of standing up and facing the chilling slipstream.
They were not more than twenty-five miles from Atkinson when Tim’s eyes finally closed and his head fell forward. His hands, which had gripped the stick in desperate determination, relaxed and the mail ship cruised on with its pilot asleep in the cockpit.
For three or four minutes all went well. The mail plane, a well rigged craft, maintained an even keel and Hank Cummins and Curly, crouched in the mail compartment with the injured Lewis, had no intimation that Tim was not at his post of duty.
Then a vagrant night wind swept out of the north and caught the plane at a quartering angle. The stick waggled impatiently as though signalling Tim that his attention was needed. Finding no master hand to control it, the stick gave up the job and surrendered to the wind.
The mail veered off to the south, went into a tight bank, and ended up in a screaming nose dive.
The wires shrieked as the air speed increased and the motor added its crescendo to the din.
The plane had dropped one thousand feet and was less than nine hundred feet above the ground when the terrific noise penetrated Tim’s sub-conscious mind.
When he opened his eyes he knew they were in a power dive, heading for the earth at nearly two hundred miles an hour. Without glancing at the altimeter Tim seized the stick and attempted to bring the plane out of its dive.
The motor pulsated with new power and gradually, carefully he brought the nose up. When he felt that the wings would not snap off under the tremendous strain, he levelled off.
Tim looked below. Not a hundred feet away he could see the outline of objects on the ground. Another second or two of sleep and they would all have been wiped out in a crash.