They reached a point where the diameter of the spiral was scarce two airplane lengths. That was the spout of the funnel. And through the spout they spun vertically, wings whirling in a silver disk about the eccentric axis of the flashing fuselage.
At five hundred Billy set the stick at neutral and nudged the rudder bar. The spinning stopped with calculated precision. Gently he drew back on the stick. The tail dropped. She sailed along on level keel. The grass came up to kiss her wheels. A procession of hangars shot past. She hovered, caressing the grass blades with tire and skid. A faint whispering answered as she touched the sod.
Another hundred feet she ran, the soil showing black in the torn wake of the guttering skid. She stopped.
Jennie, reaching out a hand, touched her polished wing, incredulous.
“I never saw anything so perfect,” she breathed. “You brought her to my feet!”
Perhaps already Jennie dimly perceived something symbolic in the landing of Billy Cobb—at her feet.
She gave him her small firm hand to steady him when he heaved himself up from the cockpit and leaped to the ground. They walked off the field together and down the gaunt post street between bare rows of flimsy frame huts.
Jennie stopped before one of them larger than the rest that boasted a screen-inclosed veranda. Odd lots of weird furniture—the potpourri of outlandish home equipment that bespeaks the officer of many “fogies” who has gathered his store of household gods in all the ports of the seven seas—littered the minute grass plots on either side of the cinder path to the door. Sweating men in dingy overalls and campaign hats were bearing it in, table by table, chair by chair, trophy by trophy, to a running fire of humorous comment.
“I live here,” said Jennie.
“Oh,” said Billy, “you’re the new C. O.’s family, aren’t you?” It was the first time he had considered who she might be or where she had come from, so completely had he accepted her on sight.