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Hugh felt drawn toward him more than ever on this account, because he had his own ideas on this subject, and they coincided with those of Lieutenant Fosdick. That volplane, started from a much higher altitude than either Bud or Ralph had reached, would never be forgotten by the patrol leader.
And anyway, no matter what happens, unless you're cruising deep, it's only a few feet to the top. Not like a crazy aeroplane a thousand feet up in the air! Something happens in an aeroplane, and where are you? With a busted stay or bamboo strut and you a mile in the air, where are you? Volplane? Maybe. But if you didn't down you'd come atumbling like a hoop out of the clouds.
He feverishly confessed that he had for many weeks wavered between hating the whole war and wanting to enlist in the British Aero Corps, to get life's supreme sensation scouting ten thousand feet in air, while dozens of batteries fired at him; a nose-to-earth volplane.
"We're going down!" cried Ned. "Well, you know what to do!" shouted his chum. "The gas bag! Turn on the generator!" Ned ran to it, but, in spite of his quick action, the craft continued to slide downward. "She won't work!" he cried. "Then the intake pipe must be stopped!" answered the young inventor. "Never mind, I'll volplane to earth and we can make repairs.
"Pray God he will!" exclaimed one of the gunners. "Look at him volplane motor at full speed, too!" The pilot was young Etzel, who, as Lanstron had observed, would charge a church tower if he were bidden. He was taking no risks in missing. His ego had no cosmos except that huge, oblong gas-bag. He drove for it as a hawk goes for its prey.
But that an accident had happened, and that trouble, if not, indeed, danger, was imminent, was at once apparent to the young inventor and the other occupant of the swiftly moving airship. For as Tom shut off his motor, to volplane down, thus reducing all noise on his craft, they could dimly hear the shouts and calls for help, coming from the water craft below them. "Help!
Back in the Grantline camp Snap and I had discussed how to use the Planetara's gravity plates. We had gone to the wreck and secured them, had rigged this little volplane flyer.... The brigands on the rocks saw it now. A flash went up at it. One of the figures crouching on it opened a flexible fabric like a wing over its side.
But both boys knew differently, and that this was only a volplane, adopted by experienced and rash aviators as a means of reaching the lower air currents more rapidly than by slow spirals; or else undertaken when having engine trouble that threatens destruction. Frank was ready to follow suit.
If the engine became so overheated that it stopped in mid-air, they might be caught in a nasty position, where it might be impossible to volplane or glide downward, without the aid of the engine. "It's all right, I tell you," said Mortlake stubbornly. "We'll beat those cubs into Sandy Beach, or "
While Joe was not far up, he had never flown a machine before at that height, and consequently his volplane seemed to occupy a longer time than it should have done.
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