“I say we would. And I’m the pilot of this ship; I’ve got the say, and I won’t take her off!”
He seemed to be half-crouched, as if prepared to fight for his very life.
“Oh, you won’t!” Finley said with deadly calmness. His eyes flickered over the youngster before him with cold contempt.
“No, I won’t, and by —— I think you’re going totally crazy! Want to add another wreck to your—”
“Listen, you puling brat!” blazed Finley, and now all the repression of months seemed to have been released, and with blazing eyes and a torrent of speech he fairly threw his words into the younger man’s face.
“You won’t take off, eh? A —— of a flyer you are! Got all the nerve in the world when the motor’s going good and you’ve got a crowd watching you, haven’t you? But when it comes to getting in there, out here in the wilderness, and giving her the gun when you’ve only got an even chance, you haven’t got the guts!”
“Shut up, or I’ll—”
“You’ll do what?”
Finley spat his words at him. His powerful body seemed to grow and expand until it overshadowed the slim youngster. There was contempt and hate in his eyes as his tongue played around the alternately shrinking and then wildly furious Forell, like a whip. He flayed the man he despised, mercilessly, laying bare the diseased spots within the outward semblance of the red-headed flyer.
Forell’s fists were clenched, and his eyes had the light of madness in them as Finley welded iron into his soul by the heat of his wrath. Time after time, during that stream of deadly insults which poured from the transfigured Finley’s mouth, it seemed that Forell was going to leap on him. Finley, giving not a step nor shifting his eyes by so much as an inch, dared him to come on.