Then, leaping on him, Korin got him about the throat in a fearful throttling grapple, and reached for a grip with his teeth. Frantic, Durant broke the hold with the familiar jiu-jitsu break of arms inside arms, brought up his knee in a deadly blow; for an instant thought the fight won. Korin staggered, and Durant deliberately smashed him under the chin and knocked him against one window, smashing the glass; then, even before Durant could follow it up, Korin was back on the rebound in another grapple, with a wild and shrill scream.
Durant glimpsed the face of the pilot staring back through the small glass inset, but the pilot was probably unarmed and helpless to intervene. Helpless, too, to keep the De Haviland on an even keel, for with the wild rushes and swift movements of the two men, she was lurching badly. The newspaper bundle was swept from the rack, and packages of bank-notes lay around.
Curtains were torn down, windows smashed; the body of Larson sprawled on the floor and tripped them as they fought. Then, once more, Korin hurled himself in and grappled, bearing Durant backward off balance. The plane lurched wildly. Both men went headlong, locked together— And Durant, underneath, was pitched head-first into the wall. This ended the fight for him.
When he woke up, realizing that he was not dead, Durant found that he lay half doubled into a seat, wrists and ankles lashed with curtain cords. If he had achieved nothing else, his blows had certainly knocked sanity into the Russian, who was terrifically battered. Some little time must have passed, for as Durant looked, he saw Korin smashing the little glass window of the cockpit, striking at it with his pistol.
“Land!” His voice rose shrill above the engine-roar, as he shoved his weapon into the face of the pilot. “Land at once!”
The air-man shouted a response which Durant could not catch. Korin was altogether too sane not to know that his life depended on that of the pilot—he dared not shoot the little Englishman who defied him.
He cursed, raved, threatened; then, with a wild laugh, he thrust out the pistol and fired, twice.
As the plane lurched, Durant caught his breath, thinking Korin had shot the pilot. But the crafty Russian had done better—he had smashed the propeller.
The wild roar of the engine was succeeded by a swift and terrible silence, through which drove the voice of Michael Korin in a wild blast. There was something splendid and magnificent about the man in this instant, as he stood watching the pilot and laughed in exultation, awaiting the result of his mad challenge to destiny.
“Now land, you swine-dog! Land, and if you try any tricks, you’ll get a bullet!”