Below him four ruddy flashes told him the bombs had struck. In a rushing whirlwind the air of night was driving past the plane. Doomed as it seemed, still the will to live, to struggle, to overcome danger and death itself remained within him. He began an effort to straighten out the dead plane's course, to catch and use to his own advantage that wind that was whistling past him now. To catch it, to ride once more upon it, if only as a kite may sink back to the earth, and so alight, little damaged rather than broken, splintered by a giddy fall.
So in the end he did straighten out at last and slid swiftly, where before he had eddied and whirled.
"Zitu!" he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. "God!" For an instant the face of Naia swam before his mental vision, so clear, so bright, so seemingly herself, that it was almost as though he beheld her in the flesh.
Then—the fire-dotted plain was very close. And the airplane was shooting down toward it, even though no longer falling, and there was little chance to choose a course. With a crash the pontoons beneath it struck through the top of a tree, and the whole machine swerved. In mid air it staggered, checked, lunged ahead again like a restive living creature, tipped, slid off sidewise, and crashed down on a crumpling wing.
Unable to maintain himself in his shaken condition, Croft gave vent to an inarticulate cry of anguish. The entire bulk of Palos seemed to rise and hit him, as catapulted from the fuselage by the ruinous landing, he struck and lay in a dark and senseless huddle on the ground.
CHAPTER XIX
A TAWNY VAMPIRE
Hours afterward, as it seemed, Croft opened his eyes, and blinked at a flare of light and closed his lids again, while he sought to collect his shaken senses.
He remembered by degrees.