“Yes, I remember it. Now get me off, Dever, and then go over to the office and see if the colonel wants anything. If he needs a stimulant I think you’ll find something of the sort in the right-hand drawer on his side of the table.”
“Very good, sir. When’ll you be back?”
“Not before sunrise. Don’t wait up for me.”
Dever gave a downward heave on a propeller-blade. Then the wide, white ’plane slid, roaring, into the darkness.
Akerley was flying low; and when he saw the little smudge of yellow light on the black expanse beneath him he went down to it like a wing-weary duck to the sheen of water. The numbness of indifference and confusion that had possessed him for an hour or more passed swiftly from his brain and spirit. His nerves snapped back to duty and his vision cleared. The light expanded to his gaze as he neared it and by its form and position he judged it to come from an open doorway of modest dimensions. It streamed out upon a green level; and he reasoned hopefully that the level ground would, very likely, be of considerable extent in front of the building. So he shut off his flagging engines, swooped around, dipped and flattened.
The machine ran, swaying and lurching, through old Gaspard’s half-grown oats; and just as Akerley was about to congratulate himself on the soundness of his reasoning, the right plane came in violent contact with an ancient and immovable stump of pine.
Akerley recovered consciousness in the dew-wet grain, in the gray dawn. He lay on his left side, with his left shoulder dug into the soft soil. The sappy stems of the young oats had saved his face and head from serious injury; but there was blood on his cheek. He felt a stab of pain through his shoulder as he sat up and looked dizzily around; and his first thought was that a bullet had gone through him. Then he remembered his changed situation and altered circumstances.
He saw the machine on its nose beside the sturdy old stump. One wing was ripped off and twisted hopelessly. That sight did not distress him, for he had finished with the machine anyway. It had served his purpose.
He sat in a field of half-grown oats, ten or twelve acres in extent, rimmed all around by dense forest. A large log-house and two barns stood in a group near the farther edge of the clearing.