And he went into a dive, motor full on. Let Dumpy follow him now, if he was so smart. Those fellows below would find out what kind of a nerve their new flyer had.
The struts were shaking in their sockets, and the wires were screaming with the speed as the motor’s roar rose to a veritable bellow. The airspeed went up slowly—a hundred and seventy, a hundred and ninety, two hundred—
Every instant he was going to pull it out, but with a sort of ferocious joy he held his ship in the dive, second after second. He was hunched deeply into the cockpit, his eyes on his instruments. He’d come down fifteen hundred feet. Now, if Dimpy was on his tail, he’d give up.
He looked around as he started to pull out, using both hands. It was all he could do to move the stick backward. Slowly the ship started to level, vibrating in every spar and strut. Dumpy was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t dared to follow.
The ship was just leveling off, finishing its swoop out, when Moran stiffened. Suddenly the stick seemed to have gone limp in his hands. It came all the way back without resistance.
He had cut the motor to pull out of the dive, and in a panic he shoved the throttle all the way on again. For a moment the ship had wavered, but now it resumed its gradual leveling process. As it came level the nose started to go up into a stall, and Moran, his heart feeling as if it were encased in ice, shoved the stick forward.
The ship did not answer.
He eased the throttle back, and the nose settled. Slowly the frantic pilot looked around. The cabane struts, on the elevators, to which the control wires from the stick were attached, were both leaning toward him. The terrific strain of pulling out of that dive had pulled them loose, and his elevators were useless. He could neither dive nor climb his ship. If he flew until the gas gave out and the propeller stopped, the ship would go into a nose dive which would not end until it hit the ground.
Suddenly Moran’s brain seemed preternaturally clear and cool. The fact that sure death apparently awaited him was in the background, merely, of his consciousness, as he methodically thought things out.
The motor was his only hope. The ship seemed perfectly rigged, meaning that at a certain motor-speed it would fly level without the use of stick or rudder. It was flying level now, at fifteen fifty r.p.m. If he cut down the speed of the propeller, it would start diving. The point was that if he sent it into a dive, could he pull it out by turning on full power? Or would the weight of that thousand-pound motor hold it in the dive?