“She’s coming—now!” It was a whisper, a prayer that came from every heart and lip in the crowd.
The plane was coming down in wide, slow circles.
“Atta boy, you’re bringing her in beautifully—yet every odd’s against you!” gritted Raynor through set teeth.
“But he’s got a chance, one chance,” muttered Hal, gripping Rex Raynor’s arm and pointing excitedly. “If he keeps to the balance he’s got—runs on that one wheel to lose momentum, it can—”
It could.
Fuz McGinnis held his plane to angle of balance, even as he sped half a hundred feet on the one wheel after he struck ground. Then came a tearing, splintering crash as the plane shot sideways, dragging the down wing into mangled wreckage. Even so, the greatest danger mark had been passed. That one-wheel run had spent the worst of the dread momentum.
Guards held the frantic crowd back while experienced hands tore at the wreckage, lifted out the occupants. The three of them were dazed, bruised, cut about hands and face from flying pieces of wood and fabric. But the miracle of it—they were alive, practically unhurt.
Fuz McGinnis stood for a long minute leaning weakly against the tilted mass of wing debris. His face held the look of one who has been on a far journey and is not quite sure he is really on home land once again. As he came out of his daze, he leaned over and gripped Hal Dane in a shaky grasp.
“B-boy,” he said, “if you hadn’t that message us to got—no, no, got that message to us, I mean, we’d have been—”
“We’d have been dead,” broke in Colonel Wiljohn. “But you brought the word, in a blasted clever way. You turned some sort of tomfoolery into lifesaving. We owe our lives to you both. I—I—we thank you.” Reaching down, Colonel Wiljohn swept his grandson into his arms, pressed the child against his face. Then he set the little fellow down and gravely instructed him to give a handshake of thanks to each of the young fellows.