“Don’t drop it!” he shouted hoarsely, as Jerry unloosed the cumbersome square can and raised it up. Standing on the edge of the cockpit with the wind whipping past him, Jerry got the cap off the gravity tank. He fitted in the short length of hose already attached to the gas can and let the precious fuel gurgle down into the tank.
Although the propeller was still turning idly in the windstream, the motor did not catch at once. That meant that Beak had switched it off; that, however much the bottle had contributed to this plight, it was no longer a factor.
Jerry screwed on the cap again and turned to the pilot.
“Thirty-five minutes?” he asked, with a nod of his head toward the replenished tank.
Beak was licking his lips.
“I can make it last forty,” he answered. His voice was strange to Jerry’s ears. Though he spoke against the wind, in a shout, the strength and confidence had gone out of it. The years of experience that had made Beak Becket so cocky a pilot now told him with relentless truth that they were in about the worst jam that could befall a flying man. Night coming; fog concealing the ground; gas failing.
Jerry wormed down into his cockpit again. He was green in this hard game, but he had the airman’s instinct, and he knew a hole when he saw one. Quite suddenly he became aware that he was in a parachute harness; that he was sitting on a ’chute—a life preserver that would carry him safely down through both darkness and whiteness to the good, solid earth.
He laughed, though his lips were so tense they were hard to command.
“He had a bottle; I’ve got a ’chute,” he muttered. “He used the bottle and got me into this. Why shouldn’t I use the ’chute and get out of it?” He did not touch the harness that girded him.
The motor picked up with a roar; then Beak throttled down. He was spiraling boldly earthward, spending his altitude recklessly as he sought to discover some loophole in the trap, some bit of ground still visible on which he could pancake the ship.