Part 2

Somehow the words revived Jerry’s courage. He did not answer, but he felt relief.

“I tell you, jump!” the pilot snarled. “Jump, I said! Jump, you----” His voice ran on in a tangle of oaths.

“I’m not going to jump,” said Jerry.

“You sap! You fool! You got a chance. Take it! Take it--quick!”

“I’m not jumping. D’you want the ’chute?”

“You trying to make a coward out of me?” Beak shrieked. “You can’t do it, you blasted little pup! Not me! I was in a ship when you was in a cradle! I’ll nose her down and dive her to hell before I’ll take a ’chute off you!”

His voice was keyed as high as the note of a flying wire under diving strain. Coming to him out of the darkness behind, it didn’t make Jerry feel any more secure.

“I’m sticking to the ship,” Jerry said stubbornly. “It’s half mine, and I’m sticking.”

Beak burst into high, jeering laughter. “You fool! Don’t you know there won’t be enough left after we hit to make you a coffin?”

“We’ve got a chance. Beak! Listen, Beak!” Jerry’s voice became vibrant with urgency. “You want to gamble on this? I’ll give you the ’chute and three hundred--about all I’ve got--for the ship--just as she flies, Beak.”

The man in the rear cockpit was mute. Jerry, turning to squint at his head and shoulders in the blackness, could see no sign or motion. But the ship, responding to Beak’s hand on the stick, shuddered in the air.

“What d’you say, Beak? It’s a gambling proposition. I’m sticking anyhow--so the ’chute’s no good to me. I’ve got a hunch, Beak, and I want to play it. Three hundred--right here in my pants pocket--three hundred and the ’chute.”

“Go to hell!”

“I’m willing, Beak. I want to back my hunch.”

The ship sang on in the still air.

“You’re a crazy damn fool!” Beak growled.

Jerry did not answer him. It was up to the pilot now.

“Crazy! Dumb! Gi’ me the ’chute! Get set to take control! Crazy! Hurry up!”

Hastily Jerry worked at the buckles. He felt only like a man easing himself of a burden. Finally he wormed out of the harness. He passed it and the ’chute pack carefully back to Beak. Then, steadying the ship with his own stick, he waited silently, sensing every move of the struggle Beak made in getting into the straps.

“Here’s the money, too, Beak,” he called, leaning down the fuselage and groping for the other man’s hand. He could not locate it.

“This is your own damn foolishness--I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Beak said thickly. “I warned you!”

“That’s right, Beak. But I want to back a hunch. If it don’t go through--you can’t be blamed any, Beak.”

Suddenly Beak’s rough fingers met Jerry’s. The roll of bills was jerked out of his fingers.

“Ready to take her over?”

“Wait a minute!” Hastily Jerry groped in the cockpit to make sure that none of the duffel was apt to jam the controls. “All right, Beak!”

“Take her! How about some altitude? This ’chute’s got to have plenty room to open.”

“Right!” Jerry’s hand was controlling the ship now, and his feet were on the rudder bar. Danger was lost in exultation. The ship was his. His to fly--his to own. For a while, anyhow. He notched up the throttle.

The motor picked up. With gentle pressure he eased the stick toward him. The ship straightened out and began to climb. He had held her on her upward course for fifteen minutes when Beak kicked his seat.

“All right,” he said, when Jerry throttled down. “Let her glide. D’you see anything?”

His hoarse voice had an appealing note. But there was unbroken gloom beneath them. Jerry had been looking, too.

“Nothing nearer than the stars,” he answered.

Beak climbed onto the fuselage, holding onto the cowling with one hand, while his feet dangled over the side. His other hand, Jerry knew, was on the rip cord of the ’chute.

“Ten years ago I’d ha’ told you to go to hell!” he said bitterly, and shoved off.

His body was visible as a sprawling thing for an instant, then vanished absolutely. Jerry, staring backward, caught a dim flare of near-by whiteness--the opening parachute.

“Poor Beak!” he muttered, with a searing pity of youth for age.

He turned forward again. The stick rattled and the plane moved uncertainly. Jerry tightened his fingers and the ship ceased its erratic motion.

“I feel as if the tail had dropped off her,” he muttered.

The sense of emptiness behind him in the other cockpit made his back feel uncomfortable. He switched on the motor. Its roar made him feel better.

“No use sticking around up here till she quits,” he decided. He picked out a star and flew toward it for several minutes, to give Beak plenty of room in descending.

With a piece of his shoelace he suspended his jackknife, pendulum-fashion, from the unlighted instrument board in front of him. Then, gingerly, he set the ship up on one wing in a tight spiral, as Beak had done. The man and plane spun downward toward the hidden, unfriendly earth.

He waited, occasionally staring downward, occasionally looking upward, to see if the stars were still visible. They were. He whistled, as well as he could. He had a long way to go yet. Then suddenly, wisps of vapor, like an army of specters, assailed the ship. He was in it.

Hastily, even frantically, he straightened out and put her into another glide. He found that drops of water were rolling down into his eyes from under his helmet. The windstream made them cold. He pulled off his goggles. With or without them he could see nothing.

“If I can just keep her in a glide!” he muttered. He put out a hand and found the jackknife. Though it was swinging gently, its position indicated that the ship was in normal flight--or making a normal banked turn.

He kept his head well up above the windshield, alert for any vagrant breeze on either cheek that would tell him the ship was not flying straight ahead. By the feel of the wind and the sound of the wires he kept the ship in a glide --as slow a glide as he dared. He checked every impulse to move the stick. When he did move it, he did so very slightly, much less than he felt was necessary. He kept one hand near the jackknife.

Through the dark whiteness the murmuring ship glided on. There was nothing to see, but Jerry’s vigilance grew more and more painfully intense. His eyes ached. His chest felt hollow.

“Damn it! How long is this going to last?”

He groped for his flash light and trained it on the fog ahead. The mist became a white, opaque wall, more impenetrable than the darkness had been. He switched the light off, tucked it in his pocket and put his hand out to the jackknife again. It was not where he expected it to be, but to the right. He edged the stick over to the left.

The landing wheels under him suddenly struck something; the ship jarred harshly. In another instant the nose went down. Jerry was slung violently against the instrument board. His safety belt cut into his body. He cut the motor. Something was happening to the ship. Noises were all about him--rasping, squeaking, swishing, creaking sounds.

He struggled upward again and dimly felt that the ship was bounding along, seemingly with increasing speed. Yet the motor was cut, the propeller was idle. It was like a delirium, a nightmare in the dark.

Abruptly he realized that the ship was on a hill or a mountain, rolling downward precipitously despite the drag of the tail skid. There was nothing he could do. He braced himself and waited.

He did not wait long. She struck something too high for the wheels to rise over. There was a crash. Jerry felt the cockpit rising under him--up and up--and then down. Some object in the darkness thrust at him, and his consciousness left his body with his hissing breath.

There was a blurred interval. Then he found himself struggling feebly against some powerful force that held him unflinchingly about the waist. His fingers came in contact with a familiar thing. It was the catch of his safety belt. He jerked it and instantly the force that held him ceased to exist. He fell heavily on his head and knees. It was grass that he dropped onto.

For a time he lay there, less than half conscious, but quite incapable of movement. There seemed no reason to move, even if he could. Then, gradually, he made up his mind to shift his body off something that was boring cruelly into his hip. Groaning, he did so. He felt the thing and found that it was the flash light in his pocket.

Pulling it out, he raised himself to his hands and knees, and rested there. Through his head was running a flood of thought. He had tried to land in the darkness. He was on earth now, and not dead. The thing to do was to see how badly he was hurt and the ship---- What of the ship--his ship?

He raised himself up off his hands. He felt the smooth fuselage of the plane above him and then a wire. With what support he could gain from the wire, he got to his feet. He turned the flash light on the plane and pressed the button.

The white radiance, clouded by the mist, traced out the lines of the ship. She was on her back. But she was not the mass of crumpled wreckage he had feared to see. The thing she had hit was a heavy rail fence. Instead of going through she had rolled over it.

“Cracked up--but not washed out,” he muttered. “If that motor----”

He dragged himself toward the nose of the ship. The prop was a splintered stump. But the motor looked good--pretty good. It takes more than a nose-over to ruin a chunk of metal.

He felt his ribs gingerly.

“I've got something gone in there,” he reckoned. “But I guess I’m a pilot now--and in about a month I’ll have a ship--my own ship. That hunch worked fine. I'm a pilot now.”

He looked at the plane and his mind was busy with the thought of a box splice for a broken spar of the lower right wing.

“Poor Beak!” he muttered. “He should ha’ stuck.”

THE END

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 7, 1929 issue of The Popular Magazine.]