Just missing them, the wing came down, the fuselage rested for a moment on the supporting earth and then earth, craft and all tumbled and torn by the wind, slipped on into deeper mud beyond the solid earth left just a foot beyond Garry’s toes.
“Let’s get back!” gasped Garry, shaken.
“But the pilot?——” began Don.
“He wasn’t there!”
Don realized, as they turned to retrace the Way, that the pilot could have had time, scant but sufficient, to leap clear in a back-pack ’chute and that it would be impossible for them to comb the marsh for him in the rapidly coming blackness, wind and rain.
As rapidly as they could, finally breaking into a run when they got clear of the most dangerous and slippery end of the promontory, Don and Garry raced toward the beckoning flares.
Carrying the mail pouch, impeded by it as it caught on the restraining grasses, Don followed Garry. Garry, his eyes straining, tried to detect the figure of Chick by their guiding light, but he saw no figure!
As they came into the clear space near the boathouse, with wind whipping the first flecks of rain into their faces to add its cold warning to the sting of salt spray torn from the growing crests of waves, Don and Garry paused, almost stunned.
The last ruddy glow of the flares, and the white fires almost constantly leaping across the zenith, showed them two forms emerging from the door of the hovel, toward the planks that led across the marsh to solid ground.
They were struggling. They were locked together. One was large, the other small and slight.