His achievements are small,
He came through the Game with no wings at all!’”
“Good! Good! Bravo!” An enthusiastic clapping of maidens’ hands around the Council Fire. “But how did he get through without any wings?” hazarded one small voice.
“Because he failed to win them, his breast-wings, his insignia.” The R. M. A., Lieutenant Ned, touched the winged emblem upon his own breast. “Or perhaps he was grounded--dropped--while learning to fly, for some act of stupidity or dare-deviltry, say, making a pancake landing, as I might have done on the sands here, coming down flat, kerplunk, without easing her off at all--wrecking his machine.”
“Humph! I’m glad that we didn’t make a pancake landing over on Squawk Hill this morning--fall down flat upon our war-work. Then we’d have come through the Game with no wings at all, eh?” Sara bent whimsically towards the shading flames of wreck-wood. “And now--now for the thrills!” she demanded hungrily.
“Such as we gave the long-suffering public on that memorable field-day? What do you say to an aërial bomb going off, to fifty-four air-ships parading in the sky, doing loops, spins, spirals, Immelmann turns, when you change your direction quickly, and so forth; to two aviators--one in reality--making pretense of changing places while looping, and--and the feminine shrieks when a life-size dummy, in leather togs, fell headlong out?”
“I’ll wager that, among the spectators, the men were as nervous as the women--so there, you Cavalryman of the Clouds!” pouted Sara, almost leaning her cheek against the silver and rose of a flaming dead arm of juniper, found on the beach.
“I wonder that you weren’t afraid to burlesque tragedy?” The Guardian caught her breath.
“Well, we came near getting the real thing: one lieutenant fell in a tailspin, in mid-air. We were pretty sure he was done for,” gravely. “Eventually, he recovered. The same accident once happened to me, but so high up that I managed to right the machine--get control of it--before I reached the ground; hence my nickname.”
The younger aviator, the intrepid pilot, leaned also, half-wistfully, towards the Council Fire: