“Aviation school has caught the idea now that it’s a pretty good thing to send a pupil up with an old-timer who can put a bus into spins and take it out of spins. If the pupil watches close enough, he automatically learns the movements. It’s the latest aviation insurance against a crash!”
A plane had been rolled out and warmed up. They climbed in. Raynor ran quick fingers along the straps that bound them both to their seats, making certain that all was secure, then he gave the word for the blocks to be knocked away from in front of the machine.
With a roar of the motor they were off, speeding up at an angle that soon had them a thousand feet above earth.
Hal Dane felt a catch of pure excitement in his breath. This was going to be different from any flying he had ever known. Heretofore it had been “keep up speed, avoid stalls, and thus avoid the fatal spin.” Now Raynor was deliberately taking him into the danger of stall and spin! Raynor was deliberately taking him into the dangers he might incur if fog, sleet or rain caught him, if unknown mountains loomed suddenly ahead, if storm winds hurled him out of balance.
They rode higher still; then the pilot suddenly shot sickeningly into the Chandelle, that zooming, sharply-banked turnabout.
He went into nose spins, and came out. Went into tail spins, and came out.
He took Hal through side-drifts and grapevines and the fluttering leaf, then righted the ship while one held the breath.
Raynor took the ship high again, then dived.
The next instant Hal was hanging by his middle from the safety belt, while the ship careened across the landscape absolutely upside down. Earth and sky swung round. To one hanging thus in dizzy space, the green earth suddenly looked crushingly hard.
The earth was coming up to meet them. It could not be three hundred—no, not two hundred feet distant. It was the end. Raynor had gone too far—lost control—he must have—