Adventure Magazine Cover — page 145: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Winning Chance was the new ship and immediately after the exhibition Tex and Hickman were to wing their way on to McMullen. Came the final punch of the film. Accord- ing to previous arrangement the observer inched his way back to the horizontal stab- ilizer in the rear, and sat there calmly, hang- ing to the vertical fin, while the pilot put the ship in a steep sideslip. He slipped down directly in front of the camera, Hickman in plain view. Fifty feet from the ground, and about as far in front of the camera man, Tex slowly kicked his plane out of the slip. As the D. H. came level the wheels tipped the ground lightly. Then a groan oi dismay came from the on- lookers, stretched for a quarter of a mile along the edge of the great flying-field, for one wheel had crumpled up. So quickly had it happened, and so light the touch of the ship to the ground, that it was back in the air again, the defective wheel hanging uselessly from the landing-gear. The hor- rified spectators could see Hickman crawl- ing back to the rear cockpit as the ship pointed southwest and headed for McMul- len. Jt was evident that neither pilot nor passenger knew what had happened. Ignorant of their peril, they would land at the normal rate—seventy miles an hour. And when the two-ton ship, with one wheel off, touched the ground—even the switches would still be on and fire was almost a cer- tainty. Every flyer there knew that the gas-tank would probably burst in the wreck, and the gas-drenched men would be hu- man fire-torches, if the wreck itself did not kill them. Major Schaffer, his tanned face gone white, leaped into a motorcycle sidecar and the driver sent it hurtling toward the tele- graph office.. Almost behind him came the camera man, who, although far from a hard- hearted person, had a strictly mercenary purpose in view. Twenty minutes later, down. in McMullen, Captain Kennard was reading the major’s telegram: MacDowell and Hickman on way to McMullen with broken left wheel. They do not know it. For sake try to let them know before they land. SCHAFFER. And even as the captain reached forethe tc:iephone a photographer in McMullen who frequently took pictures for the news weekly was starting to rush his equipment together to be in at the death. 135 Captain Kennard was talking to the garage. ‘And the only chance we have to stop them from landing and get a chance to sig- nal them is to block the field. Get every truck, ambulance, motorcycle and other transportation strung out across the field!’’ The same orders went to the hangars. In ten minutes every officer and man at McMullen was working like mad in the blazing afternoon sun. The two-hundred- and-fifty-mile trip from Donovan Field would take two hours or more, but there was no time to lose. Trucks that would not run were pushed by eager hands—even crates and boxes were added to the im- promptu rampart that stretched across the airdrome. When all was done the grimy toilers, sweat-streams grooving their dust- covered faces, sat down to wait for the ship and its blissfully ignorant passengers. Cap- tain Kennard roved around, seeing to it that fire-extinguishers were ready, signal-flags prepared, and one ambulance ready to go. Major Searles, the flight surgeon, arranged and rearranged his bandages and _instru- ments with suspicious moisture in his kind old eyes. The major had never become ac- customed to the ups and downs of the flying- game. By the time the ship came jn sight, a mere speck far to the north, the sides of the field were packed with civilians who had heard the news. The photographer was in readiness. Almost unbearable nervousness seemed to seize the crowd as the ship drew near, and Army men leaped for their proper posts. - At two thousand feet over the airdrome the motor’s roar died down and the plane circled downward in a spiral. Could it be possible that the flyers did not see the ob-; structions across the field? <A deep sigh of relief came from the crowd below as the mo- tor went full on again and the ship circled the field at five hundred feet. Two heads could be seen craning over the sides of the cockpits. Three enlisted men_ started throwing wheels in the air and a sergeant with his white signal-flags signaled slowly, “Your left wheel gone—your left wheel gone,’ over and over. With a thousand eyes glued to the ship, Hickman’s big form could be seen climbing out of the rear cockpit, edging slowly along the side of the ship toward a wing. Once on it he hung to a strut, leaned over the CO MICLOOKS C©