All they had to do was to fly straight, top speed, set down and be applauded. They need not cross the swamps of so much mystery and fear. They could come in from the East, landing sidewise to the wind. Don flew the distance to the point where they sighted the airport with his heart singing to the tune of singing wires, laughing with the purr of the motor. The successful termination of the mail flight was in sight.
Then the mystery helicopter struck!
CHAPTER XIII
WAR MANEUVERS
Intent on getting their mail pouch to the airport in record time, the eyes of Don, Garry and Chick, in the Dragonfly, were peering forward and downward to locate the wind-cone, get wind direction and save every precious second even during the approach to the runway.
Unexpected, startling, disconcerting, there came, not a hundred feet in front of the nose, the roaring hiss of a rocket rising to burst, in a brilliant, eye-stunning flash of vivid white just ahead.
Don instinctively side-slipped.
The flash, coming without warning, upset his self-control, made him think that he might be plunging his chums into some unseen danger. To speed into that area of still blazing fire was unthinkable.
Don’s side-slip got the ship away fifty feet: then he caught the wings, brought the ship to its forward, level flight.
Roaring upward, a second messenger of terror, with its blazing tail, seemed to be coming straight under the right wing. Garry, seeing it, screamed a warning into the helmet communication tube.
“Don—one’s coming—bank left!”