“How did your chute come to open up before you were clear of the plane?” asked Captain Smith when Bill reached the line.
“I was afraid that I would not be able to find the ring after I dropped into space,” replied Bill. “Accordingly I held on to the ring while I tried to climb out. I lost my balance against the wind pressure when I stood up, and, in trying to regain it, must have pulled open the chute.”
“Next time you had better wait until after you count before grabbing the ring,” said Smith. “I doubt if we will always be as lucky as we were today. I don’t understand now why that first chute did not open and drag you out of the cockpit.”
“Neither do I,” said Bill.
“Weren’t you scared to death up there when your chute fouled the plane?” Bob Finch asked Bill as they were returning to town that evening.
“Bob, I didn’t have time to be scared. There were too many things to do if I wanted to make a fight for my life. In a time like that it would have been fatal to be scared.”
The next day, when the operations office opened, there were several radios and telephone messages waiting. Those messages came from the various forests. The rain had put out all the large fires that had been burning before. The lightning had started quite a few new ones, but there were others which had started in districts where no lightning storms had been reported.
“I cannot account for all of these fires in the area to the southeast,” said Simmons as he placed pins in the map to show the approximate locations of the new fires reported. “However, these which are reported over in this area have me buffaloed. There is no rhyme or reason for their existence. There were no thunder storms anywhere near them. It rained hard enough for all the old fires to have been extinguished, and yet here is a string of new fires starting. Look at them, all in a row. What started them?”
“Perhaps there was a small local thunder storm over there,” suggested Kiel.
“How could that have been possible without the lookouts and the forest wardens knowing it?” replied Simmons. “That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.”