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Not in shattered fragments did they burst and plumb the abyss. No; quite intact, unharmed, but utterly powerless they fell. Some spiraled down, like dead leaves twirling in autumnal breezes, with drunken yaws and pitches. Others in long slants volplaned toward the hidden sea, miles below the cloud-plain. A few pitched over and over, or slid away in nose-dives and tail-spins.
She volplaned, flattened out a thousand feet or so above the island, circled as the searchlight, losing her when she dipped, sought her again with wide sweeping gestures of its accusing white finger.
He received a glancing wound in one leg, but in the excitement he did not notice it, and it was not until he had landed that he saw the blood, and knew what had happened. On and on, and down and down he volplaned until he was so near his own lines, and so low down, that he could hear the burst of cheers from his former comrades.
From five thousand feet Johnny volplaned steeply to four thousand, and Schwab's sentences became disconnected phrases that ended mostly in exclamation points. So pleased was Johnny with the effect that he flew in scallops from there on not unmindful of the two scouting planes that picked him up when he recrossed the line and dogged him from there on.
Then just ahead a flare began on the ground, next burned up brightly -a can of gasoline lighted and allowed to burn to indicate the neighborhood in which to come down. Going past and turning, Reade volplaned gracefully earthward, landing just beyond the blazing gasoline. Instantly they were surrounded by two-score French aviators and mechanicians. "It is all right!" the cry went up.
"There it is," he called, pointing downward. "We'll land in two minutes more." "No time to spare," murmured the doctor, who knew the serious nature of the aged inventor's illness. "How long did it take us?" "Fifty-one minutes," replied Tom, glancing at a small clock in front of him. Then he shut off the motor and volplaned to earth, to the no small astonishment of the surgeon.
Bland Halliday was a good flyer, and he was doing his best, showing off his skill before Johnny. He shut off the motor for a minute and volplaned. "Great way to see the country!" he shouted, and climbed back in an easy spiral. Johnny looked down.
Then his livening glance swept the heavens inquiringly. A speck in the blue, far away in the realms of atmospheric infinity, kept growing in size until it took the form of the wings with which man flies. The plane volplaned down with steady swiftness, till its racing shadow lay large over the landscape for a few seconds before it rose again with beautiful ease and precision.
Suddenly its motor was heard to stop. Instead of diving it commenced to wabble, indicating a perte de vitesse. It slipped off on the wing and then dove. I watched it intently, expecting it to turn into the dreaded spiral. Instead it began to climb. Then it went off on the wing, righted itself, again slipped off on the wing, volplaned, and went off once more.
The enthusiasm that greeted his reappearance and the approach of the machine like a bird through the blue haze of the endless prairies, stirred the crowd as the more dangerous maneuvers had not. Before reaching the inclosure, the monoplane climbed about four thousand feet into the air and then volplaned gracefully toward one of the large exhibition buildings just in the edge of the grounds.
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