By the time he reached the far end of the track he was five hundred feet in the air. Then, instead of turning, he held his course beyond the enclosure out over the adjoining fields and pastures. Here, with a long sweep in the air, he turned and headed over the grounds once more. By the time he had passed the grand-stand again, he was at least a thousand feet in the air.
At that moment, the boy began to regret his foolhardiness. To turn at that height, with the sinking swing that always followed such an operation, was enough to try the nerve of the most experienced. And, to make matters worse, Bud perversely held to his ascending flight. When the limits of the grounds had been again passed, the novice was, it was afterwards estimated, fourteen hundred feet in the air.
“Now,” muttered Bud, “it’s sink or swim.”
Closing his eyes, with one hand he threw the vertical lever slowly over for the turn, and at the same moment, he threw up the plane tips with the warping lever. It was almost sickening, the long swoop that followed, but, as Bud felt the warped surface checking the dip, he breathed again. Then he opened his eyes. The airship shed fell on his vision dead ahead and not far below.
Gritting his teeth to keep up his courage, the youngster made ready to complete his program. As the aeroplane steadied, Bud pushed the horizontal planes downward, and as the bird-like craft began to descend, he turned and shut off the engine.
“They say any one can fly,” said Bud to himself, “but that it takes judgment to make a landing. I’ll either make or break right here.”
As the swiftly whirling blades of the propellers stopped, the aeroplane’s flight slackened. Then the ivory-winged truss began to settle like a softly falling leaf. A mass of black heads appeared beneath. Suddenly, they separated, and Bud saw the ground rising as if to meet him. It was the crucial moment. The horizontal rudders sprang up, the airship seemed to pause, then with a feeble response to her steering gear, it rose a few feet and drifted along over the trodden grass. Then the landing skids touched the ground—there was a slight rebound, and Bud’s flight was at an end.