Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

When Good Fellows Get Together toward the airdrome, it seemed that the heat _ lessened. He had turned off the gas pet- cocks and opened the throttle. Had the slip blown the fire out? For a moment he was hopeful and then a fresh burst of smoke told the story. The upper wing, toward which the draft gen- erated by the slip directed the flame, was beginning to smolder. As he fought to keep the ship banked, he was aware of ever in- creasing heat that was-already blistering the wood in the cockpit. If only there was a stick in the back seat and Ransom could fly, he hifnself might perhaps climb out and shove a fire-extinguisher down into the car- buretor. But if he should let go the controls for a moment the ship would go into a straight dive and the passengers would be cinders in a moment as the draft sent, the flame backward. As he fought blindly, without hope, a dim shape loomed beside him. Through smoke- _ bleared eyes he saw Ransom, face white and eyes flashing, inch himself by the front cock- pit, on the upper side of the fuselage. Three thousand feet in the air, the young observer,fought through the ever thickening smoke, gripping his hands around the edge of the cockpit. He reached the motor, head down and the sleeve on one arm already smoldering. Tex shoved the little hand- extinguisher into his groping hand. With one arm hooked around the center section strut, almost directly over the inferno of heat that was the motor, Ransom thrust | the extinguisher between the cylinder banks and began to work the plunger. Two thousand feet high now—a square foot of the upper right wing fabric had smoldered away. The ship rushed down- ward, tilted steeply. Half-unconscious from heat and smoke, Tex saw as in a dream that Ransom’s sleeve had burned away from the arm which circled the strut, but still he worked the extinguisher and the smoke was getting lighter. Try as he would, the tortured pilot could not keep the heavy nose of the D. H. up with a dead motor any Jonger, and the forward slip sent the smoke and flame back on him. A thousand feet high—Ransom was inert against the side of the fuselage, one foot thrust through the lower wing, left arm gripped convulsively around the strut, which was charred and smoldering. On the airdrome below running figures danced crazily before the pilot’s eves. The 31 wing was still smoldering, but the heat had: grown less, although his feet, still locked against the rudder, were torturing him. His boots were smoking and the dashboard ahead of him next to the motor was char- ring through. His. last conscious thought was to straighten out the ship as it dropped di- agonally across a hangar. He released the rudder, pulled back on the stick and as the tireless wheels hit the ground and crumpled up he drifted into unconsciousness—blessed surcease of pain. x PRM THE rays of the sun sketched fan- eg tastic filigrees of light and shadow as 1t searched out the-corners of the big room with its two lines of white-covered cots. Tex MacDowell, growing conscious of dull pain around his ankles, opened his eyes for the first time in twenty hours. As he looked around the room, apparently de- serted save for a dozing orderly at the far end, a portion of the old smile was observ- able below a great white bandage over one side of his face. “Still alive and together, eh?” he thought, and turned his head slightly. Ransom, even more bandaged than was Tex, still had one eye unexposed and he met the pilot’s gaze from the next bed. “Well, how are you, old-timer?” queried Tex in a husky whisper which was the best he could muster. “Broken leg—pretty badly burned, but nothing serious. They say you’ll be out in a couple of days,” croaked Ransom, his voice muffled by his face bandage. Tex was silent a moment. Only the buzz- ing of a stray fly broke the stillness. It was very muggy and hot and he felt as if his whole body, inside and out, was burning up. “Dave, when you kept on working that extinguisher you pulled the nerviest stunt T ever saw. It was bad enough to get from the back seat to the wing, but when you let your arm get a “And you brought us down—God!” whispered Ransom, shuddering a Iittle as his thoughts went back to those awful mo- ments. The orderly slept on. Outside the door they could hear the low-voiced conversa- tion of a woman and a man—probably a nurse and a doctor. Presently Ransom broke the silence. COmicloo CN Vp) C©