Adventure Magazine Cover — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

by inches. It’s Only a Question of Time “Switch — off,” Punnasd repeated the starting dialog. Shall you take off—or shall I?” Tun- nard called over his shoulder to Hanratty. “Beg pardon, sir?” The corporal thought he must have misunderstood what his pilot was saying. “T say’’—Tunnard howled it above the intermittent roars of the Le Rhone—‘‘will you take off or do you want me to?” Hanratty let go the control-stick. as if it were red-hot. ‘You, sir,” he protested, ¢ ‘you.”’ Now, putting the breeze up an Ak Emma was an old game for the pilots, so old that most of them had left it behind them in their training-school days. Also, most of the Ak Emmas had been subjected to it so often that they knew what to expect, and were as cool in the air as the pilots; but Hanratty was in no way prepared for Tun- nard’s offering. This was* something new, this ground- scraping. The Avro, dragging a wing close to the sands, zithered in and out among the officers’ marquees like a windward-bound duck trailing the wave troughs. Marquees, mess-tent, bell-tents, hangars, they seemed about to hit everything and then to miss it— It was like whirling about on a fast-spinning top. An agonized glance showed him one wing-tip sucking the sands in its wake, the other directly above it. At the same instant their wheels seemed.to be running into a wall of brown canvas. This pilot was crazy! Hanratty opened his mouth. A blast of - air hit it and seemed to blow throughehis entire system. He swallowed a great blob of castor-oil, gripped the sides of the cock- pit, closed his eyes and became violently ill. From then on he prayed that they would hit f something that would put him out of his misery. They would have, had Tunnard not pos- sessed the luck of the devil. And he was pressing it, riding it hard. Flying like some insane bat in the twilight. He had his spec- tators, and he’ was going to give them the show of their lives. He knew that it was useless to stunt before scout pilots; there was not one among them but who could do the whole gamut of tricks himself. Any bone-head can do anything at five hundred, - one thousand or two thousand; but to treat the ground as if it just wasn’t there, that _was flying. This shaying the margin of ~ > =comicbooks.con safety, this brushing his wings against ‘the face of calamity, it was this would make them sit up. It did; even Jacobs admitted that Tun- — i nard was either drunk, or a genius. “He’s a ‘fool,’ answer. the The roar of the Le Rhone drowned his curses. no doot V’ll ha to take care o’ him furst. I'll just be startin’ my car.’ called his little Ford ambulance. After several reckless zooms at the group on the tarmac Tunnard climbed the Avro up to five thousand feet, where he executed, = 3 a breath-catching series of tail-slides. = was not so much for the benefit of those on _ the ground as it was for the complete hum- bling of Hanratty. There is something ap- palling about a tail-slide, something which = The machine plunges earthward, tail first, and then, as if some = _ giant were using it for a hammer, its nose shatters the nerves. whips violently earthward. strains. life-belts; their protest. Machines aren’t built to stand much of it. It is probably the most dangerous of flying maneuvers. W hu-s-s-s-s-s-s-sh! Whu-u-u-u-u-umph! Everything The occupants lurch against their _ Hanratty was jerked out of his misery and 4 3 into a world full of horror. Again, and again, the sickening wrench! Tunnard grinned back at the putty-colored face. This was the stuff to take the guts a = out of him. He spiraled up for another go. This one would be a humdinger. He glanced at the altimeter—s,ooo. A look below showed the tawney floor of the desert, stretched to the mists which lie on — the rim of the world. A mile underneath lay the hangars. He pulled back on the stick and then — = : : turned to watch his nose come over the sky-line. - ae ee 6) seemed as if some misfortune had chine. Something in the indecision, ‘the apparent lack of purpose of its movemerits, = = whispered to the heart ofeach pilot that he was looking on at disaster. az P» . = ae a a re, er ee ’came Major Moore’s ee take care of him for this, “Aye,” the Scotch doctor put in, “but : So he always wood, wire and fabric screech _ TO. THE. -watchers - bentath 20 oa reached out and gripped the ma- Its engine had” Sq 3 e stopped, and the black nose lobbed ahead aimlessly. Then, slowly, one wing dropped =