Part 12 (2/2)

He was too close to stretch out the glide!

With a last desperate movement, Hal opened the throttle of his engine.

The motor caught! With a thrill of joy he heard the roar of the motor as it started again, and felt the stick respond to his touch. He pulled back the stick, the nose of the plane lifted, and he zoomed into the air.

Down on the ground Pat, Bill and Bob had gone through the tortures of the d.a.m.ned, watching Hal fall to what seemed certain death, while they stood helplessly below. When they saw him zoom once more into the air, their hearts bounded with him.

”The gas-line must have been clogged!” shouted Pat. ”It cleared itself out when they dived!”

”Thank G.o.d,” said Bill.

Bob could say nothing, but kept shouting Hal, Hal, Hal, over and over again. Hal was gliding in, now, to land.

He got out of the c.o.c.kpit, white and shaking. The others, beside themselves with joy, surrounded him, shaking his hand, hugging him, patting his shoulder. But Hal did not seem to notice what was happening.

”You handled that plane like Lindbergh!” shouted Pat. ”Good boy.”

But all that Hal said was, ”I'm never going up again.”

Pat had gone over to the plane to look it over. ”It seems all right,” he said, turning off the motor that he had tested. ”But there must have been a bit of dirt in the line leading from the gas tank. You had a lucky escape, lad. It was quick thinking that you did up there. I'm proud of you.”

But Captain Bill saw that Hal was in no mood for praise. He knew, too, that the best cure for the boy was to take him right up again into the air, so that he would have no time to develop a phobia against going up.

But he would not risk taking up the Marianne until it had had a thorough overhauling.

The Captain put his arm around Hal's shoulder. ”You mustn't say that you're never going up again, Hal, old man,” he said. ”You proved yourself up there. You're going to make a great flyer.”

”It was great, Hal, great,” said Bob. ”I would have crashed the old bus and killed myself. I couldn't have kept my head.”

Hal said nothing except that he wanted to go home. Pat stayed behind with the plane while the other three went over to the parking lot to get their machine. ”Don't say anything to my mother, whatever you do,” said Hal. ”I don't want her to worry. After all, nothing really happened to me, and why should she be frightened for nothing?”

Bob and the Captain promised to say nothing. In fact, they spoke very little on the way home. Hal was worn out emotionally and the others were occupied with their own thoughts.

The Captain was worried by the new turn that affairs had taken. He was disappointed that all the progress that had been made in Hal's education had been ruined on the first solo flight. It would have been all right if he had been able to take Hal into the air again, but he couldn't.

Tomorrow they would be too busy with their preparations to do any flying, and the day after that, they would start for the Adirondacks, leaving Hal behind. Without his friends, and with the memory of his terror fresh in his mind, Hal would fall back into his old fears, and be actually worse off than ever. The time to cure Hal was at once, if at all.

Captain Bill had an idea. He thought about it rather carefully most of the way home, and when they were almost home, he broached his plan.

”Say, Hal, how about coming over tonight-with your mother? I'm going to tell my story after dinner, tonight, and I thought maybe she'd like to hear it.”

Hal was rather surprised. His mother rarely visited, and did not see very much of the Martins. In fact, she had been to the Martins only twice since they had been neighbors, and one of those visits had been to return Mrs. Martin's formal call upon her new neighbor when the Greggs had moved into the house next door. But Hal said, ”Why, I'll ask Mother.

I don't think she's busy, and I guess she'd like to hear your story, Captain Bill. I've been telling her about the stories, you know.”

”Good,” laughed the Captain. ”Don't tell her too much, though. I want her to come to hear them.”

”I think she'll like to come,” said Hal. Thinking it over, he felt convinced that his mother should hear Captain Bill's story that night.

He knew she would enjoy the evening with them all. They were a jolly lot, and Mrs. Martin often was lonesome when Hal went off and left her alone. She would be better for a night of company. And perhaps-well, Hal could not dare to hope-perhaps she would approve more of his going on a trip with these men if she knew how splendid they were. But then Hal shuddered. They were going to fly to the mountains. And he was never going to fly in a plane again. He felt that he would rather do anything in the world than put himself in a position again where he might experience the awful horror of feeling himself going into a nose dive.

They let Hal off at his home. When Bob and the Captain were alone, Bob asked why Bill had thought of inviting Hal's mother to hear his story that night.

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