Air Stories, April 1936 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

AIR STORIES heartedly, and jumped from the seat to lift the hood. If the switch-key was missing he could ‘‘ short’’ the circuit and start the engine. One glance under the hood and his heart sank. There was not the remotest chance of ever starting that engine for some time. A rifle slug had smashed the ignition coil to pieces. Another one had broken the inlet manifold. The bandits had worked fast. Don’s blood boiled when he looked down at the pale, wan face of Tommy. The girl was sponging the blood away from the wound. She looked up. ‘Get your Arctic from the plane and some wood for a fire. I can handle this. I’ve been a nurse.’’ The pilot quickly pulled his thick © eiderdown sleeping-bag from the equip- ment compartment and brought it to where the wounded man lay. In a few minutes he had some dry spruce, and soon the flames were crackling through a well-laid firestack. ‘‘Now,’’ Kitty ordered, ‘‘ take a look at your engine, and see if it can be repaired. If it can, get those men ; I’ll look after Tommy here.”’ Don cast an admiring glance at the girl, He looked straight into a pair of grey eyes, clear and determined. ‘You'll do,’’ he said, and turned to examine his engine. ‘‘What a girl, what a girl!’’ he murmured as he inspected the engine. ‘‘If I had somebody like her to depend on, I’d get along.’’ A dull splash of lead on a rocker-arm showed him where the slug had struck. It was a disastrous hit. The rocker-arm was fractured and bent almost double by the terrific impact of the bullet. It was definitely out of action. Without that rocker-arm, the valve assembly on one cylinder was useless. It would be possible to keep going in the air with one cylinder missing, but he could never hope to get off in that thin air with an engine that didn’t function perfectly. Don’s agile mind worked like light- Disaster had dogged the searchers from the start. Broken struts had been repaired with frying-pan handles. Com- plete landing-gear had been made on one occasion from a wireless mast. In another instance raw native copper had been used to patch a leaking cylinder. With experience such as this behind him, surely he could mend a fractured rocker-arm. He simply had to. So much depended on it. : E considered and rejected a dozen plans. Every minute that passed placed a greater distance between him and the murdering thieves. He could not bend the rocker-arm straight and then lash it with wire. The metal would most likely break when it was subjected to the strain of the straightening process. He couldn’t solder it. He had no welding outfit. What could he do ? i Like a flash it came to him. He had found a solution. He could, with a reasonable amount of luck, braze the break, but he had no brass spelter. This fact didn’t stop him. Hastily pulling the equipment-compartment door open, he withdrew one of the firepots used for engine heating. As soon as it was lighted, he searched his engine repair kit and found a brass bushing. Using a file, he filed the bushing, care- fully catching the filings as they fell. When the bushing had ‘been filed away he had a fair amount of good quality brass. He now required some borax. His medical kit yielded a small amount of this. It was used for snow blindness. Five minutes later he had the rocker- arm set on a piece of thin metal. placed this over the blue flame of the firepot and watched it glow red. When the first cherry hue spread about the. fracture, Don sprinkled the break with borax. He then tried a small amount of spelter. It ran perfectly. Jubilant, he whisked the rocker-arm off the fire and tapped it straight with a hammer. He then replaced it, and as soon as it was sufficiently heated, he ning. He remembered the many times sprinkled his spelter on, thinly but he had been out on long searches. steadily. 334 He _ GOMIGIOO SJ (C(O)