"Pardon me," I replied, with a low bow. "But that is for you to do."
And before he could seize me, with one blow of the foot planted suddenly in his chest I shot the young Monsieur Power squarely off his biplane onto the grass. Even as he measured his long length on the ground, I had seized the controls, and the aeroplane spurted fifty yards ahead of him. Ever since he had removed the black casquette, a wild idea, of a dramatic quality irresistible, had formed itself in my brain. I now seized the helmet and thrust it down upon my own head.
"It shall be finished as you wish," I cried. "But it is I, Lacroix, who am best qualified for the task!"
For I had seen, during that wild flight over the ground as I clung to the frail framework of the tail, a figure that I loved—a figure in brown, tall and graceful before the white hangars, a figure that clasped its hands in terror. And some instinct told me that the life of this Monsieur Power was necessary to the happiness of my beloved mademoiselle. I knew also that I alone without undue risk might break down the barrier of iron pride that had arisen between these two autocratic young people.
Qu'est-ce que tu veux que je te dise? I might have paid more heavily for the mad intoxication of that last flight. In a month or two I shall be again aloft.
I have often maintained that sooner or later a moment of emotion, of sheer joy in the struggle and risk, will cause the soberest pilot to throw discretion to the winds. It was so in this case.
Parbleu! I leap, I dive, I twist in figures of eight, I fight my way by inches against the wind, and, turning, I shoot back upon its current with the speed of a projectile. I am shaken and buffeted until I gasp for breath. I swerve, I dance, I caracole—I pirouette on a wing tip, catching my side slips on the rudder as one plays cup and ball. I dangle myself at the end of a single wire on the brink of eternity, crying defiance to the winds! C'était de la folie—the madness of battle. Far below me I could see an occasional spectator running like a rabbit, grotesquely waving his arms.
"Oh, yes, he is doubtless clever, this Power," I cry in my pride. "But he is, after all, nothing but a buzzard. It is I, Lacroix, who am alone veritable king of the air!"
Coquin de sort! I do not know exactly when the wire controlling the right aileron parted. I became aware merely that that side of the machine canted downward and refused to rise again in response to the lever. Like a flash, I thrust forward the elevator, hoping to reach the earth by a glide. But I arrived by a quicker maneuver—a whirling gust, a tourbillon of the most terrific, hurled the biplane sidelong to destruction.
The man who has been accustomed to face death meets it at last with a gentle sneer on his lip, as one who is vanquished by an enemy whom he knows to be in reality his inferior.