Appearances are deceiving. To Al and Curt, on the ground, with darkness, distance and trees to screen the truth from them, it seemed as though the glare they saw beyond the grove must spell a blazing airplane.
Instead, the light came from a landing flare, dropped by Bob.
As he headed over The Windsock roadhouse, and decided to give up, to return to the aircraft field, he had all of his mind and attention on his craft. Because of that he was able to notice a mystifying, if tiny bluish light, intermittent and flickering, close to the pipe that conveyed fuel from the tank to the mixing carburetor.
“That’s an electric spark!” he decided. He was right.
Somehow, either through one of those malicious acts which had already been done to other ships, or from a rubbing wire, some electrical conducting wire had worn off its insulation and was bare, and each time it rubbed or touched metal it made a spark.
If there is one thing more dangerous than another in the air it is the menace of an open spark close to gasoline feed lines and carburetor mixing chambers.
Knowing it well, unable to determine the cause, but sure that the spark was electrical and dangerous, Bob took the only safe course. As Curt and Al had observed, his engine stopped. He cut off the ignition.
The sparking light ceased.
“Now,” thought Bob, “I daren’t use my motor. That means I must glide. At this height, if I remember what Lang said, the angle that will give me safe flying speed will about take me to that little field we first saw the brown ‘plane hidden in. Can I make it?”
He depressed the nose, watching, by his sense of touch, how the stick and rudder bar acted. As he moved through the air he elevated the nose a trifle, to get as flat a gliding angle as he dared; but his whole mind was concentrated on that feeling, that sense of heaviness in the reacting of the controls. When they began to respond sluggishly he knew enough to sense that he was losing flying speed, approaching the danger point called stalling, in which the ship gets out of control, drops or slips or does some other uncontrollable maneuver.