CHAPTER III
An Awful Note
“Preserve us a’! It’s coming down. Coming down—a fire-tail! Driftin’ doomward—down’ard—an’ afire!”
Andrew’s hoarse exclamations tore at the reddened air, even as sharp horns of flame gored it, springing out from a biplane’s slipping side.
“Willa-woo! It’s side-slippin’—side-slippin’ down—afire!”
Old Andrew’s hand went to his head. The girl sank to her knees beside her waking flower clock. For her the end of the world had come, heralded by that mysterious pitch pipe in the woods.
The chauffeur looked, too, as if he heard the Big Trump.
Drifting down, a fire-tail, the aëroplane truly was; a long, thin tail feather of brightest flame streaming out from it to the little leaden fish, two-pound fish, that held its radio antenna steady in the air, kept it away from the controls—flipper and rudder controls!
Drifting down, a fire-tail, the aëroplane truly was.
Those controls were useless now. The burning plane was side-slipping from five hundred feet aloft—in spite of the efforts of the one aviator to right it before it landed.