Adventure Magazine Cover — page 129: what you’re looking at

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

he was pointing. The thermostat showed that the motor was red-hot—that was bad. The oil-pressure gauge registered one com- plete O—that was worse. And the tachom- eter, which indicates the propeller’s revo- lutions per minute, was steadily on the de- cline—that was as disconcerting as having a parachute fail to open! So Tejon Pass was our last and only hope. A motor suffering from such a complication of deadly afflictions has, at best, only a few minutes to live. It isn’t going to stage a comeback, and pilots never expect it to; it’s going to die; ours did. It just wheezed to a binding freeze, and hope abdicated. Bulwer, dropping the plane’s nose ever so slightly, began nursing a stretched glide for what looked like the best landing-spot in Tejon. Anything out of the perpendicular looked good! Now a plane with a dead motor has to come down. Each plane has a certain safe gliding angle, and usually, a lesser angle—not quite so safe—to which a good pilot can flatten out and stretch his allotted distance. Bulwer knew his plane and what it could do. We had no headway to speak of, the controls no grab on the air. The plane just pancaked, staggered, November 23rd, 1926 —- —" het ren Oris co ; and oozed down and ahead. The howl and whistle had left the wires and struts and the world was quiet with a sickly awe. And the ground came shifting up and up. Bulwer’s try was good but— Well, that mountain country is hot in the summer-time; and it was August. With hardly fifty feet between our plane and the ground, the hot, rare air let us down. Through that last short space, we went into a spin and crashed. And I woke up at Bakersfield—in the hospital. The nurses were very attentive; we air- nuts always have it soft when we reach the meat-house. But a mysterious dark man, lurking always within sight of my bed, caused me much curiosity when I was able to sit up and take notice. On the second day of conscious convalescence, the mys- terious loiterer introduced himself: “I’m Deputy Cole. Your flying partner was killed. The law got wise to all that booze you were carrying in the secret wing- compartments and I’m here to ride herd on you. Sorry, old man. I use to be with Air Service myself. You’re not bunged very bad—a busted left wing, a few teeth swal- lowed and knocked kicking and cold. You’ll 127 MICLOO© SS (©