Finally Hinkley placed the wrapped coin against the leak. He pressed hard against it with his hand. He could feel the handkerchief soaking, but he knew that the motor would last many precious minutes more because he had reduced the leak by over half. He set himself as comfortably as he could. One foot was less than an inch from the edge of the wing. His right arm was crooked around a strut. His left held the temporary barrier against the radiator. In this position he fought the propeller blast.
The heat of the water made him change hands frequently. Once he nearly fell into the propeller doing it, for both hands had to be free for a second at one time in order that the coin be always pressed against the leak.
Then he had to change fingers, for his thumbs were both scalded. One by one he used the tip of each finger, and one by one they scalded. His thin lips were set into a line that was like a livid cut in his face, but the makeshift plug was always there. He did not even glance at the ground six thousand feet below. He wondered whether Broughton knew what he was suffering, and would land at the first opportunity.
Broughton did, but for a half hour he could find no place. Then the great ship cleared the last peak. Over beyond the foothills plowed fields gleamed dully in contrast to the black spots of trees.
The left hand motor was eighty-five Centigrade, flying throttled to a thousand revolutions and with the shutters wide open. It was difficult to handle the ship with the right motor turning up so much more. Broughton came to a decision. To take a chance was the only way.
He cut the right hand motor until it “revved” up a thousand, and started a shallow dive. In a moment the Martin was diving through the gloom at a hundred miles an hour. It was only three thousand when they cleared the foothills. The country was still ragged, but it was level.
Broughton pulled his left parachute flare. A sense of ineffable relief filled him as he saw a fiery ball drop earthward. Those flares didn’t work as invariably as they might.
The eyes of the three airmen, stranded there in the darkness, followed that ball of fire with unwinking eyes. Suddenly it burst, and a brilliant flare swung downward on a small parachute. The earth was lighted up fairly well in a circle of at least a mile’s radius.
Broughton cut his motors still further. He beckoned to Hinkley. Hinkley knew the desperate need for haste—that flare would not last long and the other one, hung to the right hand wing-tip, might not work. He worked his way rapidly back to the cockpit, careless of his raw fingertips as he grasped wires and struts to help him along. The flare was within three hundred feet of the ground, and the Martin a thousand, when he reached the seat and strapped his belt.
There was just one possible field. It was a cornfield, apparently, about seventy-five yards long. There was a fence at both ends. Next to one fence was a road. On the far side of the other was a very small clump of woods.