“You go.” Dick was generous to the friend he admired, and who was almost a year older. “It would need a cool, quick head to handle whatever you might find in the swamp. You go.”
That also was Sandy’s opinion when, after a rapid inspection, they agreed with Jeff that the amphibian, set down with only a strained tail skid and a burst tire in the landing wheel gear, was usable.
“But there’s no gas,” objected Larry, noting the indicator in the control cockpit. “See, the meter says zero!”
“It was that way when I looked before,” Sandy said. “That was why I didn’t think anybody meant to use it——”
“Easy to fool you on that,” Jeff declared. “It’s been disconnected. I wouldn’t be surprised if that-there tank wasn’t nearly half full. They had it all fixed and ready——”
“Let’s go, then,” urged Larry. “Dick, look over the pontoons for strains, will you? She may have struck one of them—she has tipped over part way, maybe hit one of the pontoons.”
Dick, examining with the thoroughness of an expert, with Jeff’s and his chum’s life perhaps depending on his care, stated that he saw no damage to the waterproofed coverings of the water supports. Declaring that they would stand by and watch the airplane, Sandy and Dick watched Larry and Jeff get settled, Dick spun the propeller to pump gas into the still heated cylinders, Jeff gave the “switch-on—contact!” call, Dick, pulling down on the “prop,” sprang aside to avoid its flailing blades, and the amphibian’s engine took up its roar.
Acting as a ground crew, Dick righted the craft by thrusting up the wing which was evidently not seriously damaged, while Sandy, as the motor went into its full-throated drone, shook the tail to lift the skid out of the clogging sand. His eyes shielded from the sand, blasted back by the propeller wash, he leaped sidewise and backward as the elevators lifted the tail and the amphibian shook itself in its forward lunge, lifted, flew within two inches of the sand, and then began to roar skyward.
“He’s drawing up the wheels, now,” Sandy called to Dick.
“They won’t be any good, with that burst tire—he’ll have to set down in water anyhow,” Dick explained. Sandy nodded.