CHAPTER X
SAFETY AND DANGER
Far above Hal Dane, Raynor's airplane shot into a fantastic rolling andtwisting and turning, falling like a withered leaf, springing to lifeand hurling upward, stalling at wrong angles, behaving like some crazedthing of the skies.
Then Raynor volplaned to a beautiful landing, taxied across the turf,got out and strolled over to Hal.
"Now you go up and take a try at that," he ordered.
"Umph--I mean, sir--oh, sure!" muttered Hal, backing off a little andlooking amazed. Had the careful, conservative Raynor gone out of hishead?
"I mean it," said Raynor. Then his eyes began to twinkle. "It's all inthe course. Only you're not to do it all by yourself the first few dozentimes. You'll go up with me till you get the hang of it from watching."
Signaling for mechanics to take charge of his ship to give it theregular cleaning and overhauling after flights, he led the way towardsthe hangars for another machine.
As they walked, Raynor launched into his explanation.
"If a man wants to fly conservatively, he's first got to learn to stunt.May sound crazy, but it's a tested truth. It's a known fact now that afourth of all the real crashes happen because a fellow got into a tailspin and didn't know how to get out of it. And the pilots in thesecrashes are mostly the youngsters, not the veterans. When a flyer haslived long enough with aviation to be considered a veteran, he usuallyknows by instinct what to do in a spin, doesn't have to stop and think'What button shall I push?'
"Aviation school has caught the idea now that it's a pretty good thingto send a pupil up with an old-timer who can put a bus into spins andtake it out of spins. If the pupil watches close enough, heautomatically learns the movements. It's the latest aviation insuranceagainst a crash!"
A plane had been rolled out and warmed up. They climbed in. Raynor ranquick fingers along the straps that bound them both to their seats,making certain that all was secure, then he gave the word for the blocksto be knocked away from in front of the machine.
With a roar of the motor they were off, speeding up at an angle thatsoon had them a thousand feet above earth.
Hal Dane felt a catch of pure excitement in his breath. This was goingto be different from any flying he had ever known. Heretofore it hadbeen "keep up speed, avoid stalls, and thus avoid the fatal spin." NowRaynor was deliberately taking him into the danger of stall and spin!Raynor was deliberately taking him into the dangers he might incur iffog, sleet or rain caught him, if unknown mountains loomed suddenlyahead, if storm winds hurled him out of balance.
They rode higher still; then the pilot suddenly shot sickeningly intothe Chandelle, that zooming, sharply-banked turnabout.
He went into nose spins, and came out. Went into tail spins, and cameout.
He took Hal through side-drifts and grapevines and the fluttering leaf,then righted the ship while one held the breath.
Raynor took the ship high again, then dived.
The next instant Hal was hanging by his middle from the safety belt,while the ship careened across the landscape absolutely upside down.Earth and sky swung round. To one hanging thus in dizzy space, the greenearth suddenly looked crushingly hard.
The earth was coming up to meet them. It could not be three hundred--no,not two hundred feet distant. It was the end. Raynor had gone toofar--lost control--he must have--
Hal steeled his nerves to try to meet the crash without a shriek.
But even while he held his breath to a sobbing gasp, the ship rolledover slowly and easily into normal flying position, and came to earthwith all the grace of a perfect three-point landing.
The rolling earth ceased rolling. Hal Dane sat in a limp daze, like onecome back from beyond a veiled, blank interim. Then his senses sweptback to him.
So Raynor had known what he was about all the time. It was no accident.Knowingly he had gone into the back-dive and come out with the famousslow roll.
Two weeks after that Hal Dane was doing his own slow rolls, doing hisspins and his Immelmanns. He practiced continually, with Raynor coachinghim. High over a safe landing field, the pilot showed him all sorts oftricks and dodges, showed him how to extricate his ship from everyconceivable position.
Here was carefulness in a new form. The Rand-Elwin School tried to lookahead, to foresee dangers, then to train its flyers to meet that dangercapably.
Storm, fog, ice-weighted wings--these were natural adversities thataviators must circumvent as best they might.
But there was still one worse danger--the danger of carelessness.
The instructors strove to teach air-minded youngsters the arts ofmechanical safety. In the air courses it was a cause for demerit, forexpulsion from school even, for a pupil to fall into some mechanicaldanger that forethought could have avoided.
A horrible event impressed forever into Hal Dane's mind the penalty onepaid for mechanical carelessness.
At mid-day, one of the students in advanced flying had gone up to givean exhibition in reverse controls, turns and spirals.
He was a marvelous flyer in spite of a certain bland recklessness thatseemed to edge his every act. Now in the air he seemed to short-turn inhis spirals, to be given to shooting into perilous climbs. He was thatway in all his work, sliding through with a swagger carelessness. As hewatched the pupil aviator now in the air, Hal's mind went back to eventsof that very morning, how the fellow had gone slipshod through thetiresome routine of overhauling the engine of the machine he was to usein the noon flight.
Some god of luck must ride that fellow's shoulder. For here he was up,flying a dirty motor that would have clogged on anybody else, yetgliding through dives and figure eights with the easy grace of awhirlwind.
A score of pupils and an instructor or two stood on the field below,heads bent back, watching the beautiful stalls and spins. Again he shothigh into the air in a circling swoop. Then while everyone stared aloft,a little puff of flame darted out from the engine.
"It has back-fired--hot carbon showering from that dirty engine!" moanedHal between white lips.
For a dazed second everyone stood paralyzed with horror while above themanother flame shot out, darting towards the carburetor.
The next second the aviation field came alive. Rex Raynor leaped to amachine, a rope was hurled in after him, frenzied hands whirled themotor, shot the blocks from under the wheels.
Up into the sky with meteoric swiftness rose Raynor.
Below him, men stared upward, faces tensed with anguish as they watchedhis maneuvers. What could he do? What help could he be now?
With every moment it seemed that the burning plane must whirl downwardand dash its lone occupant to death. Tongues of flame licked about it,reaching greedily for its vitals--the controls. The wings of the planehad been dipped in a fireproofing process, but now even these weresmouldering.
Evidently the cockpit had become unbearable, for the watchers on theground descried a figure creeping piteously out on a smoking wingstretch.
Charred bits began to float down. Raynor was circling in, shortening hiswide spirals, dodging to the windward of flaming, floating particles.
Why didn't he hurry? Why didn't he swoop in--now? Ah-h-h, the agony ofit! The doomed machine would be falling apart. It shot flaring throughthe skies like a bird of fire.
Crouched on its furthest wing tip rode the hapless young aviator, headbent away from the searing heat that was creeping out and out to him.