With every moment the rim of land was submerging. Soon the ravening yellow torrent would sweep over the last vestige. It seemed utter folly to risk a life and a plane for one already dead. Still there might be a flickering spark of vitality in that still body.
No use to tap radio messages for help. No help beyond himself could reach this doomed spot in time.
He must land on this narrow bit of earth already crumbling from the wash of the waves.
Under its strange whirl of wings, the gyroscope plane dropped straight as a plummet. A deviation to the right or to the left, and aircraft, aviator and all would have been engulfed in a roaring torrent without one chance in a thousand of escape.
But his trained eye had measured distances carefully. In that straight drop he landed well in the middle of the tiny land crescent, and where it was least narrow.
In the drawing of a breath, he was out of the cockpit and running toward the prostrate figure. Even at the thump of the machine to earth, that one had not stirred. But now, out from under a shelter of brush a child came creeping, a little boy that even this much effort seemed to exhaust, for he slumped down weakly.
It was Jacky Wiljohn!
“Jacky! Jacky!” shouted Hal Dane, “run for the plane, quick, while I bring your mother!” As he spoke, he could feel the rim of land trembling beneath him, crumbling to the awful power of the waters.
But the child lay where he had dropped. It was as though his last faint store of energy had been used in his effort to creep into the open.
Hal had already lifted the woman across his shoulder where she hung limp. He was staggering under this burden, yet he must add more. With a quick swoop, he seized one of the child’s hands and dragging him, took a few swaying steps forward.