Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

96 jump for it. The engine’s afire and the crate will be in another minute. No need to shoot this rat. He'll roast in this coffin. He hasn’t got a parachute!” With a sardonic leer at the uncon- scious Skip they plunged out of the plane after the money bags. Pilotless, relieved of the weight of Searface and his companion, and the four sacks of currency, the monoplane went into a side slip. The motion rolled the half-conscious Skip toward the open cabin door through which the two ban- dits had plunged in taking to their parachutes. Inches from Skip’s battered face tongues of flame licked searingly. The flames, now that the plane was gliding slowly, could gain headway. In a mo- ment the fuselage would be afire. The heat seared Skip’s face and stung him into life. He groaned and rolled over on the slanting cabin floor. Desperately he flogged his numbed brain and opened his eyes. The flames scorched his face, brought him to a full realization of his predicament. Moaning with pain, he threw out his arm and slammed the cabin door shut. With superhuman effort, flogging his cringing body, he dragged himself to the pilot’s seat. It was his instinctive air sense that guided him now. He was too far gone physically and mentally to plan or to act coherently. But his instinct told him a power dive, with the gas throttle wide open, might whip out the flames. That was his only chance. If he failed he wouldn’t have to pull the plane out of its dive. He would be through. A glance at the altimeter showed him he still had over five thousand feet of altitude. Room enough for a desperate chance. He shoved the stick forward. Responding to his movement the mono- plane nosed earthward. The radial motor roared louder as he gave it the gun. The hurtling plane quivered and strained, shaking as though it would ae ae BILL BARNES wrench itself apart. The air-speed gauge climbed dizzily to two hundred miles. The wind howled fiendishly through the strained and creaking struts. Suddenly Skip realized the flames were no longer licking past the cabin windows. The terrific dive had whipped them out! HE -HASED of the gas feed and gently pulled the stick back toward him, leveling off. Quivering, like a race horse at the end of a fast run, the monoplane came gamely out of its nose dive. The altimeter showed less than a thousand feet. Skip opened the glass panel at his side and inhaled great gusts of fresh air. Every breath cleared his brain. For the moment he was safe. But the air bandits had escaped him. ‘He stuck his head out of the window, looked down, then up. Floating gently, swinging in lazy arcs, he spotted the two gunmen in their parachute harnesses. They were above him. Skip’s reckless, strut-straining, wire-stretching dive had carried him down faster than the ’chutes. The sight spurred him even as an idea dawned full-fledged in his active brain. He banked sharply and nosed swiftly for the nearest parachute. “This’ll throw a scare into ’em but won't kill °em.” He grinned. “They’ve still got to talk plenty turkey to me. I think I know who engineered their jobs now.” Judging his distance nicely he swooped into the ‘chute, catching the cords on his left wing tip a yard above Scarface’s terror-stricken face. The ‘chute whipped back over the wing and Scarface hung suspended in his harness, dangling from the front of the wing. The force of the wind, Skip knew, would keep the parachute in position and pre- vent Scarface from dropping. Compensating with his controls for the added weight on his left wing Skip B oO CON) Ghook (C©