There was wild excitement on the line as the Larkin thundered low across the field. They were pointing, jumping up and down, pointing to the under-carriages of other ships. The Larkin was vibrating so that Finley himself was bounced from his seat, at times, against his loose belt. The wreck of the under-carriage had weakened the basic spar-structure of the entire ship.
“Do they think I’m a —— fool?” Finley raged suddenly, and the fingernails of his free hand dug into the flesh.
“Steady, now,” he advised himself, and throttled the wild uprising within him.
There was but one thing to do. He couldn’t land four tons at fifty miles an hour, without wheels. And the Larkin wasn’t worth saving, anyhow.
It was so left-wing heavy now that it took all the strength in Finley’s powerful shoulders to keep it on an level keel, and the vibration was so terrific that he could see the wing tips oscillate. The thousand-pound motors seemed to be striving to tear themselves loose, and each landing and flying wire gave an illusion of being a dozen.
If only the old hulk would hang together for five minutes! That would get him over the vast expanse of Wilbur Wright Field, seven miles north. He circled houses and avoided traveled roads as he fought desperately to keep his stricken ship in the air. It was weakening fast. At any moment it was liable to tear itself apart. He must not let it fall in a thickly settled section.
As he reached the edge of the vast airdrome, seven miles outside of Dayton, it was impossible to keep the left wing up at all. The Larkin was like a bird with a broken wing, falling sidewise.
He unstrapped his belt, holding to the wheel as he tried to keep the nose up. Facing the rear of the ship, one hand on the wheel behind him, he gathered himself.
To slip would be fatal now. Those two propellers were like buzz-saws and should he be thrown into either of them he would be carved up as butter by a knife.
One foot was on the seat. Directly ahead of him was the bomb compartment, its top three feet below the upper wing, even with the back of his seat. Eight long feet away was the observer’s cockpit, a round hole in the wide fuselage.