He had seen so many similar accidents where pilots had "slipped off the wing." Seldom if ever had such accidents turned out other than utter tragedies.
But there was one thing he knew—a possible way of salvation, though almost an impossibility for any save the coolest brain. It is harder to do nothing when danger threatens than anything else—unless one is paralyzed with fear. And Frank Sanderson was not the person to be bemused by peril.
So this one thing he did—nothing. He let go of everything save the broken control rod and shut his eyes. He felt the sickening down-rush of the aeroplane and sensed, too, the up-rush of the ground.
Expecting a crash that would be the last sound in his ears, the last physical feeling he would have in this world, he was suddenly shocked by the lurching and righting of the aeroplane. He turned on the motor, recovered the steering wheel and control, finding himself on a line of flight scarcely two hundred feet above the ground.
He came safely down in a field where a party of wondering French soldiers welcomed him with acclamation. They had seen the perte de vitesse and thought the Américain aviateur had been shot down.
A first-aid man of the Red Cross dressed Frank's slight wounds, while an amateur mechanician repaired the broken stability rod. In half an hour he took his machine up again and winged his way back to the firing line, amid the cheers of the soldiers.
Clouds were gathering in the upper strata of air, and at the usual observation level these drifting blankets of mist began to obstruct his view of the battlefield and the space directly above it. He was therefore driven down to the six-thousand-foot level and later to five thousand feet.
There was fighting between the German and French aeroplanes over other parts of the field; but just at present all seemed quiet near Sanderson.
A great cloud drifted over and touched him like a chill and almost palpable hand. He felt that this was no place in which to remain, and was about to descend a few hundred feet to escape the menace of the cloud when, in shutting off his motor preparatory for the volplane, he distinguished the noise of another motor near by.
He shot a keen glance about. He marked each friendly aeroplane in his group. All the German machines he saw were at a distance.