The story was a somewhat old one now, but Harlan himself never tired of giving his big chum full credit for having saved his life. Harlan had been in battle with a Hun plane, and although he had come off victorious, he had sustained such damage to his own machine that he was compelled to make a speedy landing in which the law of gravity figured more prominently than did his own control over wings, elevators and rudder. The inevitable result was a smash-up, with Harlan on the very bottom of the débris. There he had lain for four hours, barely conscious, half frozen, and bleeding from a dozen serious cuts, when Big Jack Carew, out on a lone reconnoitering expedition afoot, had by the merest accident come upon him.
It was five miles from that spot to the nearest dressing station, and it was partly enemy territory at that; but Carew had carried the injured man the entire distance in no more time than it would have taken the ordinary unburdened man to do it, and the surgeons had said afterward that it was only this quick rescue work that had prevented a loss of blood which would have cost Donald Harlan his life.
No wonder that Big Jack Carew was admired, respected, loved by all who knew him, and especially so by the three other men who made up his crew.
As he stood now, after his abrupt appearance and brief remark about the Halifax weather, silhouetted in the open doorway by the meager Newfoundland dawn, the trio of lads within the one-room building looked up suddenly from their respective tasks with smiling nods of greeting.
Fred Bentner, the wizard wireless operator, who had won his right to that title by his many feats of efficiency with the radio key and earpiece, was for the fiftieth time reinspecting an expensive and highly-prized fleece-lined leather coat which had been presented to him just before the crew had left the States for the bleak Newfoundland shore from which the flight was scheduled to start.
A few feet away Don Harlan was down on his hands and knees, cramped into a most uncomfortable position, almost exhausted from blowing an auxiliary draft into the grate of a balky stove, on which Andy Flures with equal difficulty and no greater success was endeavoring to fry four husky portions of ham and eggs.
Harlan was the navigator of the American crew, while jolly Andy Flures was alternate pilot with Big Jack. The four of them made a most happy and congenial group, and at the same time an aggregation of experienced birdmen to give just cause for anxiety to the contestants of any other nationality.
"Hey, you!" Donald commanded, when he had sufficiently recovered from his arduous efforts to talk. "No charge for admission, you know. Come inside and shut the door. Permit me to give you my place. You've got more lung power than I have; maybe you can put the spark of life into this stove. If I may be pardoned for the perpetration of an innocent pun, you may thereby blow us all to a substantial refreshment of 'ham-and.'"
He arose and, with a most stately bow and wave of the hand, proffered the position of honor and place of official stove-blower to his erstwhile rescuer.
"Nothing doing," responded the huge Carew, with good-natured emphasis. "I'm no blow-hard."