Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

42 Wyndam’s land on Madagascar because it was valuable. When young Dick went out to reclaim it they got rid of him to keep from losing it.” “But who?” Bill asked. Shorty spread his hands and shfugged his shoulders. ‘You tell me,’ he said. LATE the next afternoon after the starboard Diesel motor had been re- mounted in the starboard wing stub of the huge carrier-transport, Bill climbed to the bridge, flipped his contact switches and worked the starter. The two pow- erful motors caught, sending a terrific blast of sand and dirt backward in the slip stream. With his head cocked to one side he listened to the drone of the two engines while his eyes rested on the tachometer. A few minutes later he slipped his boots into the rudder stirrups and gunned the twin supercharged motors. He signaled to his mechanics that he was going to take the big plane into the air. The giant sixteen-foot propellers had become two iridescent arcs in the sunlight. The low-winged, duralumin plane was trembling like a pointing set- ter. As the escape doors in the forward compartment came closed and the wide entrance door on the port side was swung to, Bill turned in the pilot’s seat and shouted for Sandy. The kid came running forward along the runway be- side the Eaglet. Bull pointed to the cir- cular platform above and back of the pilot’s seat. “T’m going to take her out over the Mediterranean,” he said. “Get up in the one-pounder turret and when we get out I’il give you a signal. I want to be sure that gun is all right.” Sandy’s face beamed. He scampered up the steps to the circular glass-inclosed turret. He had practiced with the rapid- firing gun mounted there. But not enough to satisfy him. He wanted to be able to use the gun with the same deadly accuracy he had with the machine BiLL BARNES guns mounted in the Eaglet. Bill swung the huge ship around into the wind and poured juice into the twin engines. Their muted roar came through the almost soundproof cabin as one. A smile flashed on his lips. Both the mo- tors were doing their stuff to perfection. The big plane rolled down the run- way with lugubrious grace. The flaps came down. The transport lifted almost immediately. Bill took it heavenward in wide, sweeping circles. At ten thou- sand feet he leveled off. The self-ad- justing props automatically adjusted themselves to a new pitch. The monster ship bored through the chilly air at its usual cruising speed of two hundred miles an hour. Far to the south of them the air quiv- ered and danced above the brilliant-yel- low sand of the desert. Picturesque mountains towered thousands of feet upward along the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. Along the coast wound a white stream cut out of solid rock, high above the sea, forming a corniche that is one of the finest roads in the world. Along the same route cen- turies ago passed Carthaginians and Ro- mans, Vandals and Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards and Turks. ae: “There’s history in them there now hills, kid,’’ Bill said into the plane phone as the Moorish city of Oran faded away behind them. “A high state of civiliza- tion existed here centuries ago. But France has developed it. The roads are the equal of the old Roman roads. They extend far out into the desert to meet the great caravans that come in from the heart of Africa, Great men these Frenchmen !” “The French own Madagascar, too, don’t they, Bill?’ Sandy asked. “They do, half-pint,’” Bill said. “They took it the way the British took India and the Japanese took Korea. They claimed it as far back as 1642 but never got anywhere with their claim. “In the 1880’s they tried to take it oO CON) Ghook CO