There was a blurred interval. Then he found himself struggling feebly against some powerful force that held him unflinchingly about the waist. His fingers came in contact with a familiar thing. It was the catch of his safety belt. He jerked it and instantly the force that held him ceased to exist. He fell heavily on his head and knees. It was grass that he dropped onto.
For a time he lay there, less than half conscious, but quite incapable of movement. There seemed no reason to move, even if he could. Then, gradually, he made up his mind to shift his body off something that was boring cruelly into his hip. Groaning, he did so. He felt the thing and found that it was the flash light in his pocket.
Pulling it out, he raised himself to his hands and knees, and rested there. Through his head was running a flood of thought. He had tried to land in the darkness. He was on earth now, and not dead. The thing to do was to see how badly he was hurt and the ship— What of the ship—his ship?
He raised himself up off his hands. He felt the smooth fuselage of the plane above him and then a wire. With what support he could gain from the wire, he got to his feet. He turned the flash light on the plane and pressed the button.
The white radiance, clouded by the mist, traced out the lines of the ship. She was on her back. But she was not the mass of crumpled wreckage he had feared to see. The thing she had hit was a heavy rail fence. Instead of going through she had rolled over it.
“Cracked up—but not washed out,” he muttered. “If that motor—”
He dragged himself toward the nose of the ship. The prop was a splintered stump. But the motor looked good—pretty good. It takes more than a nose-over to ruin a chunk of metal.
He felt his ribs gingerly.
“I've got something gone in there,” he reckoned. “But I guess I’m a pilot now—and in about a month I’ll have a ship—my own ship. That hunch worked fine. I'm a pilot now.”
He looked at the plane and his mind was busy with the thought of a box splice for a broken spar of the lower right wing.