“Stand clear; or I’ll throw the bomb!”
The effect of his words was instantaneous. The boys, clinging to the swaying ladder, saw the soldiers dash back as if terror-stricken and Rogero himself—crazed with fury—seemed to have ordered the men not to fire for they dropped their rifles.
Like a flash Frank saw his opportunity. If they could reach the top of the ladder the lurching aeroplane would answer her helm.
“Climb, Billy. Climb! It’s your last chance!” he cried. “Climb with every drop of strength in your body!—Quick Harry—the picric acid!”
“CLIMB, BILLY. CLIMB! IT’S YOUR LAST CHANCE.”
As though galvanized into a last spurt of life by Frank’s emphatic words, Billy’s tired muscles came into play and slowly, with what difficulty he never knew, for to this day the young reporter says he doesn’t know how he did it—he managed to follow Frank up the ladder. As they did so Harry emptied the acid into the gasolene tank and urged by the tremendous impetus this gave her engines, the ship began to rise.
As they climbed desperately higher, the Golden Eagle gradually regained her equilibrium and began to respond to her riding planes as Harry frantically manipulated them. Frank crawled after what seemed an hour through the trap in the pilot-house floor. Instantly stretching himself out—he reached down to Billy. He seized the reporter by the wrists and fairly lifted him into safety beside him.
Of this brave struggle, however, Billy knew nothing; for as he was pulled through the trap his overwrought nerves gave way and, as the Golden Eagle shot into safety at thirty miles an hour, the young reporter lay in a dead faint on her pilot-house floor.