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Early the next morning, about half-way across, Hawker decided that there was no chance to make the land, and began looking through the fog for a chance for a safe landing. By zigzagging on the steamship courses for about two hours, with his engine hot but running well, he picked up the Danish steamer Mary, and pancaked on the water about two miles ahead of her.
If he could only pancake her down just beyond that big hole, maybe she would stop rolling He pancaked, but in doing so struck too hard. The undercarriage was wiped out completely. He felt the bound, followed by a terrific up-fling of the tail, and then a thousand stars went shooting before his eyes and it seemed that a lightning bolt rived his brain. Then darkness and an infinite peace....
To avoid landing down wind and down-hill, the pilot banked to the right before he flattened out. The bus pancaked gently to earth, ran over the bracken, and stopped two yards from a group of shell-holes. Not a wire was broken. The propeller had been scored by the bracken, but the landing was responsible for no other damage.
Within an hour the wind had ceased and the slush in the lagoon had pancaked into flakes of forming ice that bid fair to become solid within a short time, for the day was bitterly cold and tremendously bright. The sky rose from filmy silver-azure to richest sapphire, and the rolling waters between the floes were darkest purple-blue.
A bullet through the petrol-pipe having put the carburettor out of action, the engine ceased its revs., so that we glided several miles, crossed the then lines at a low height, and touched earth among the network of last June's lines. We pancaked on to the far edge of a trench, and the wheels slid backward into the cavity, causing the lower wings and fuselage to be crumpled and broken.
"You heard that, Whitford?" he said, and Clara's face betokening an extremer contrition than he thought was demanded, the colonel rallied the Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them Signor Excelsior! and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the rocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burned there, barked all over, all to be able to say they had been up "so high" had conquered another mountain!
"Mhm-hmh I thought so!" he ejaculated, staring severely at the elevators. "This is bad pret-ty darn bad! They musta done a tail-slide and pancaked. That's ba-ad." He removed the smokeless cigarette from his lips, looked at it, felt for a match, and shook his head slowly while he drew the match across a hot rock at his feet.
His two guns trembled and flamed for four seconds and then the German dropped straight for earth and crashed in a flurry of smoke and flying débris. Tam looked backward. The bomber had pancaked and was drifting to a landing; the squadron was out of sight. Tam glided to the broad field before the hospital. "I knew it was you I knew it was you!"
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