Unafraid, determined, if need be, to risk all to save Don from the vicious doom intended by the infuriated, senseless man who had tried to avenge a mistaken idea of the helicopter’s purpose, Garry held on.
The mail ship swerved away long before it came near Garry and the Dragonfly. Don, its pilot saw, would be above any safe dive he could make, and he suddenly changed his tactics, swerved and then, kicking rudder and banking—but in the wrong direction with respect to making a turn—the mail ship following its controls, skidded upward, straight for the helicopter.
But its pilot did not want a crash.
He thus got into a position where his sudden restoration of balance put him just forward of the helicopter.
There, revving up to full speed, he sent back over the tail of his ship that most terrible of all man-made winds—the straight, hard fury of his propeller blast.
Don felt the helicopter stagger.
With all his hope gone he felt sickish, as the blast came. Not alone his own, but Chick’s life, too, was about to be the payment for an impulsive plan.
But that Power above and beyond man’s puny hates, sometimes called Luck, oftener known as a good “break,” had caused the mail pilot to neglect to return his elevators to neutral; slightly raised, the tail surface caught the full effect of his own deadly slip-stream, sending the nose sharply upward, and thus making that fury of disturbed air pass only the tractor propeller of Don’s craft—so that its upper blades at their best speed were able to draw him up beyond the danger of worse than an instant of horrifying danger.
Stalled, the mail ’plane fell away, and its pilot had his work cut out to avoid a bad stall. Over the bay, although the clouds concealed it, the mail ’plane, without pontoons, must quickly get flying speed, or plunge.
Don, still rising, and Garry, flying toward the swamp, saw another airplane, with the unmistakable markings of the Government service, come swooping from a higher altitude.