In the sky heights was safety. On the ground below lurked death, awaiting the slightest mischance in landing.
And yet Hal Dane must come down to a forced landing—now—immediately. He was not here to skim the clouds for exhilarating joy. He must rush a wounded man and an important packet to the train crossing.
Slowly young Dane circled earthward. And each downdrift laid a chill of terror on his heart. Now that he was coming to earth, earth looked most unnatural. Morris Crossing should be familiar ground; yet viewed in the white moonlight from over a plane edge, all things took on monstrously strange proportions. In his terror Hal began to feel that he could not distinguish a field from a forest, a road from a river. He might smash across housetops, might hurl himself, plane and all, into the moving train before he could stop. No, he could not do this thing, could not! If gasoline held out, he could drift in mid-air till morning.
In answer to his sudden tense pressure, the elevator was pulled so hard that the machine all but stalled, then fortunately cleared off and zoomed upward at intense speed.
High air—safety again!
But Hal Dane was no coward. Up in the heights, his brain seemed to cool. The train was coming in. It was a matter of seconds. And he must meet that train with the packet.
Coolly he began to map in his mind the lay of the ground close to Morris Crossing. There was the group of small houses, the improvised box-car waiting-room, a storehouse, behind that an empty, rolling stretch of field. That was his chance. He must somehow land in that field.
A week ago, at the Air Meet in Interborough, Hal had watched innumerable airplanes cut motors and circle down. He had studied and read everything on aviation he could lay hands on—he knew exactly what he ought to do. But actually to do it! A terror chill quivered up the boy’s spine.
Then he set teeth, coolly stopped the motor, pressed into a bank that began to drop the plane in great circles. Dane tried to remember everything at once—best to volplane down in spirals of a certain size—must flatten off to save a nose dive—must—
Then the black earth came up to meet Hal Dane.