Part 2

All three men were tired, Nick and the station man from pushing the hand-car to the wreck; the conductor from his walk to McLearson to report the accident. For nearly an hour they labored through the rising water, saying little to each other, each bent upon conserving his strength until the goal was reached.

At times the water lapped at the top layer of ties, almost floating them in spite of the weight of the four men who rode there. When the water was at its deepest, as when crossing fills in the railroad, progress was even slower; yet somehow they slowly won advancement and kept the car creeping through the rising flood.

* * * * *

After an hour of almost insurmountable difficulty they passed through the last cut and rolled the car out of the water toward the station. From that point on, their progress was much faster; they broke into a ragged trot, using up the last of their energy in an effort to get speed.

The streets of McLearson, though a veritable mire, were passable for motor traffic, and Nick and Doctor Matthies loaded the three injured men into an automobile and proceeded as quickly as possible to the edge of town where the Douglas was waiting. Dusk was lowering down upon them; the light of day was already failing and the rain had increased and fell in fitful, gusty showers. The men were transferred from the car to the stretchers of the plane, and Nick hurriedly examined the line of his take-off. He walked the full length of the field--some seven hundred feet--noting holes and ridges he must avoid when he started the mad rush to get off the ground. He noticed that at one point along the fence--where the ravine intersected it--there was danger of striking his wing against the bank, yet because of the added slope at this point he decided to take off toward it. He walked back to the plane quickly, knowing that he had less than fifteen minutes of daylight still remaining.

When he returned to the ship he found about thirty men and boys who had come to the field at the girl’s request. He cautioned them about the propeller, then climbed into the cockpit and started his motor, returning to the ground, while it warmed up, to instruct the men in aiding him to make the take-off.

“This field’s too muddy to get started rolling unless you help me,” he said to them. “First, I want six men to go to the end of the field”--he pointed out the ravine to them--“and wait there. I may crash this ship, and if I do there’ll probably be a bonfire. You wont have a chance to get me out--I’ll be right in the middle of it--but you can get the Doctor and the men out of the cabin if you’re right there when it happens, and work fast.”

* * * * *

“The six men whom he had selected tramped off through the mud and rain, and Nick turned to the others. Under his instructions they picked up the tail of the Douglas and rolled the ship back until the tail-surfaces were almost against the fence; then, with the Patrol pilot telling each of them where to stand, they stationed themselves in two groups at the trailing edge of the lower wings, each man having a handhold on the wing.

“When I open the throttle,” said Nick, “I want every man of you to push like hell! I mean push! Run with the ship just as long as you can keep up with it pushing--but don’t trail along behind after it is going faster than you can run. When you let go of the wing, look out you don’t get hit by the tail--step to one side and get out of the way.”

* * * * *

“He climbed into the cockpit again and settled himself in the seat. He was surprised, just as he was ready to gun his motor, by the girl’s appearance through the passageway between the pilot’s compartment and the passenger’s room to the rear. She stepped up through the aisleway and seated herself at Nick’s side.

“The Doctor wont let me ride back there,” she said without emotion. “I wanted to be near my daddy all the time, but he wont let me. I’ll have to ride up here.”

“You’d better climb down,” Nick replied hurriedly. “There’s no telling what may happen to this plane--we may all be killed. I don’t want you on board if we crash.”

The girl looked up at him gravely, but made no move to get out of the cockpit.

“Hurry!” Nick ordered. “It’s almost dark and I’ve got to get away from here! I can’t take you.”

“I wont get out,” she said, without raising her voice. “My daddy is in this airplane and I’m going to stay near him. If we--if we have an accident and all get killed--well, I’m not going to get out, anyhow!”

“Listen, girl,” Nick snapped, “I haven’t got time to listen to the whims of anybody! I’m trying to save your father’s life. Now you get back there on the ground--and get there in a hurry! It’s getting dark!”

“I wont! You’ll have to throw me out! My father will need me when we get to the hospital, and this is the only way I can get there.” She began to sob. “Anyway,”--she looked at him pitifully,--“anyway, he’s my papa and--and--”

“All right,” said Nick, as gently as his temper would permit; “but get that safety belt around you.” He helped her fasten the safety belt around her waist. “I don’t want any of my passengers thrown out on their necks when we turn over.”

He made a last inspection of the plane, then unbuckled his own belt and climbed to the ground. He let the air out of both tires, so that they were almost entirely deflated, and presented a flat cushion to the mud.

“Almost forgot that!” He grinned at the waiting men. “All ready? Now for God’s sakes _push_!”

* * * * *

“In the cockpit again he opened the radiator shutters so that the motor wouldn’t boil under the labor of the take-off, raised his goggles to his forehead so that his eyes would be free from shattering glass in case the plane crashed at the end of the field, and pressed the throttle slowly forward until it struck the end of the slot. The motor picked up its revolutions slowly--it was swinging a big propeller--and gradually the ship began to roll, mushing down into the soft mud as each foot of advance was gained. Nick felt its tendency to nose-over as it picked up a little speed, and he was forced to pull his flippers up to prevent the nose from burying itself in the ground, although in doing that he knew that he prolonged the take-off. Half the length of the field had been used before the men who were pushing against ship began to drop away from their places at the wings; when that much speed had been obtained the acceleration was fairly rapid, and within a hundred feet more the last man let go his hold upon the wing and flung himself upon his face to dodge the tail of the ship as it flicked over him.

The take-off had been made directly toward the ravine, just as Nick had planned it, but he expected the Douglas to pick up speed quicker than it did. When the edge of the ravine was reached, the fence still fifty feet away, it was not yet in the air. It rolled over the edge of the ravine and settled down, picking up speed more quickly because of the greater slope. Slowly it began to rise; it was clearing the ground nicely when the wing-tip on the right side struck the bank of the declivity with a soft, sickening sound. The ship swung sharply, shuddering and almost out of control, to the right; for a moment it seemed to hesitate as if wavering just before a fatal plunge into the ground. But Nick was quick on the controls; he wound the wheel hard over and leveled the plane in time to prevent the crash; he looked out along the right wing and saw that three feet of the wing-tip had been torn away, and was hanging now, an inert but dangerous mass of débris, to the spars and wires of the wing structure.

* * * * *

“With full aileron control depressing the left wing of the plane, it would fly level, but try as he might, Nick could not roll the ship into a left bank. He skidded the Douglas around in a left turn, hoping to increase the lift on the right wing enough to bring it up into a higher-than-normal position, which would have offset to some degree the decreased lifting surface of the right wing caused by the accident. He eased the plane around, finally reaching the direction which he must fly toward Little Rock, but the plane was still flying level--with the aileron control hard over to the left side.

Above him now, Nick saw the darker gloom of wet clouds, three hundred feet above the earth. At times he flew in the base of them, the black water of the earth invisible below. Rain still filtered out of the clouds, and the ship flew into it and brought it back into the faces of Nick and the girl with a velocity that made it feel like grape-shot. It was almost impossible to face it, yet it must be faced; refuge behind the windshield of the ship was impossible--the utter black of the night required constant vigilance.

* * * * *

“For perhaps five minutes the Douglas handled normally enough that Nick was able to hold it on its course, flying by “feel” and his compass and his altimeter. A gnawing fear of a hidden hill or ridge in front of him clutched at the Patrol pilot; he had had friends who met their death by colliding with such barriers, made invisible by fog or darkness. From the disablement of the plane itself there seemed no immediate danger of a crash; it was extremely right-wing-heavy, but still manageable.

He was seven minutes away from McLearson, battling doggedly with the Douglas, when he felt a severe shock against his controls. He could not see what had happened, because of the darkness, but a moment later he felt the plane rolling into a right bank. He realized, then, that some part of the injured wing had given way. He did not know whether a crash would result immediately or not, but he knew that the crash would come, in spite of everything he could do. He experienced a pang of regret for the injured men--they would never see a hospital; if not killed in the crash, they would drown in the angry water into which they would be thrown when the ship lunged in!

The girl beside Nick had seen the wing strike the bank and had seen him struggling with the controls since that time. Perhaps she understood something of what was taking place, but that realization produced no display of emotion. She looked at the damaged wing, then at Nick, then down into the blackness beyond which the ugly waters of the flood were concealed. She looked back at Nick--and _smiled_!

The Douglas had been rolling into a steeper bank momentarily. Nick knew that it was a matter of a few seconds until it would tilt up and slide off into the ground--unless, by some means, a weight could be placed on the left wing to counteract the decreased lifting surface of the right one. He placed his lips to the girl’s ear and shouted out his lungs above the roar of the motor.

“Going to crash!” he yelled. “Climb out on the left wing to balance the ship! Hurry!”

The girl nodded. Nick unbuckled her safety belt with a single fling of his hand, and she stepped up on the cowling just behind the cockpit. Slowly, fighting for every inch of progress against the biting wind and the sting of rain, she made her way to the edge of the fuselage and down upon the left lower wing. The force of the propeller blast struck her and slammed her up against the cutting edges of the streamlined flying-wires; by the pale glow of the exhaust Nick could see her clutching desperately to hold her place. She moved farther out upon the wing, and Nick lost her in the darkness; but he knew that she made progress because the ship slowly began to right itself. As she neared the wing-tip the plane resumed normal flying position.

* * * * *

“Clinging against the strut, clutching the icy metal to save her life and the lives of all the men in the plane, the girl fought the cold and fatigue and growing numbness for forty minutes. Nick opened his throttle wide and the ship plunged through the darkness at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, despite the resistance of the débris that clung to the jagged spars of the broken wing-tip. He flew entirely by his compass now; the lights of towns below had been blotted out when the flood waters destroyed power-lines. He wondered how long the girl could stay there, for he realized the fight she was putting up to cling to the strut.

The lights of Little Rock blinked up ahead of them at last, and Nick circled the field and landed by the beacon light. The plane rolled out of the beam, and Nick turned back to the hangar. He taxied to the “line” and without stopping his motor scrambled out along the wing to help Miss Richardson to the ground.

But she was not there!

* * * * *

“Nick was stunned. He pictured her being torn from the strut by the fury of the wind; he visualized her falling into the black waters of the flood. Then he realized that she had fallen to the ground after he had landed; otherwise the plane would have been unbalanced, and he would have been unable to maintain it on an even keel. She was somewhere on the flying-field, probably having fallen in exhaustion, when the Douglas landed.

Borrowing a flashlight, and leaving the injured men to the care of Doctor Matthies, Nick hurried out across the flying-field, throwing the beam of light ahead of him, swinging it back and forth across the wheel tracks and out into the misty gloom of the flying-field. He broke into a run, splashing through the mud wearily. He reached the point where he had turned the ship out of the beacon light, then hunted downwind in the darkness toward the point where the plane’s wheels first had touched the ground.

Failing to find her there, he retraced his steps to the plane--and found her almost under the wing, lying prostrate in the muddy water of the field, unconscious and exhausted from her struggle with the elements of Nature. He picked her up gently and carried her to where an ambulance was waiting.

In the ambulance, with Nick and Doctor Matthies riding by her side, she opened her eyes and looked vaguely around her. She recognized them both presently; then her gaze wandered out the window of the car. At last she looked back at them.

“We made it, didn’t we?” she asked weakly. “Will--will Daddy get all right?”

Doctor Matthies patted her hand. “He’ll be all right,” he said softly. “He’s better now--he’s at the hospital.”

She was silent again for several minutes, and then smiled wanly.

“I’m sorry I fell off--I didn’t know what happened--I was so cold. If Papa just gets well--”

“Try to sleep now,” said the Doctor. “You can see him in the morning.”

“I knew he would get well--if I could just stay out there on that wing.... I’m sure he will--now....” And a moment later, to Nick: “Sometime, when you’re not too busy, could I take a ride with you--_inside_ your airplane?”

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 1929 issue of The Blue Book Magazine.]