“What’s that crazy fool trying to do?” he roared with impatience.
As for Elinor, she was beside herself with anxiety and perplexity, suddenly feeling a trifle easier as she spied the commander’s lips curl in a sly grin.
“And I was the one that said he couldn’t fly!” Harding admitted with enthusiasm.
Lefty then piloted the ship into an Immelman turn, followed by a spin and a dive through the nearest company street as the men below scattered in all directions.
As the ship once more turned its nose upward and again gained altitude, the wheel slipped off the landing gear and fell to the ground, in plain view of the audience of pilots, officers and ground men.
One of the mechanics ran forward and picked up the wheel, holding it high above his head to inform Lefty that his landing gear was damaged. The boy caught sight of the warning gesture and as his expression of triumph once more became overshadowed with gravity, he realized the danger that awaited them, thinking first of Panama’s safety.
Elinor, suddenly transfixed with horror, was another of the audience who saw the wheel fall as did the major who, with a trained presence of mind, ordered the man nearest to him to call out the ambulance.
“I lost a wheel!” the boy shouted back to the sergeant in the rear cockpit who replied by lifting his head and laughing with fiendish merriment.
“You better take the ’chute and jump for it!” Lefty yelled, indicating the parachute. “I’ll stick and attempt to land her safely.”
“Not me,” the hard-boiled top kick called back. “I’m gonna stay right along and see what you’re gonna do!”