The Project Gutenberg eBook of Flood waters

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Title: Flood waters

Author: Leland Jamieson

Illustrator: Paul Lehman

Release date: January 1, 2025 [eBook #75015]

Language: English

Original publication: Chicago, IL: The Consolidated Magazines Corporation, 1929

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOOD WATERS ***

It was clearing nicely, when the right wing tip struck the bank.

Flood Waters

By Leland S. Jamieson

A stirring story of an adventure by the Kelly Field pilot who gave us “The Affair of the Juxacanna” and other memorable stories.

Illustrated by Paul Lehman

SLOW rain for days, falling interminably from leaden skies that hovered just above the earth. A chill northeast wind, gusty at times, never changing in direction; a wind that brought more rain. The dreary patter of water on shingled roofs, falling now as a gusty shower, sounding like a handful of pebbles striking overhead; then settling into a slow descent maddening in its monotony. Gray dampness in the air; a sticky dampness that soaked through one’s clothing and into everything. Day after day, tedious in its incessancy, dribbling down in a steady, growing stream that seemed mechanical. Rain falling from a solid blanket of wet fog above, in which there were no broken patches, no blue sky, no promise of relief.

For a week rain fell almost unbrokenly, until every slight depression in the ground, every track of man or beast, held water that dully glistened. Roads became impassable; here and there a car was stuck, its rear wheels burrowed deep in mire that had no bottom. Teams of horses, their backs steaming from the moisture in their coats, struggled through the slimy, glutinous muck, tugging patiently at wagons piled high with the household goods of refugees. Gaunt-eyed men, their faces blackened from days of neglect, sloshed wearily along behind their teams, turning now and then to speak some word of encouragement or caution to their wives and children who clung to precarious positions among the water-whitened furniture on the wagons.

The rain continued unabated. Creeks and bayous, dry ordinarily, filled now to their banks, then overspread the flattened countryside with their regurgitations. Inch by inch the water crept up, snarling viciously at the underpiling of bridges, grinding sedulously at the approaches of culverts and the embankments of fills. One by one the bridges over streams and creeks gave way to the ugly swirlings of the water; one by one the avenues of escape were beaten down; men and women and children were trapped, some of them to be snatched, horror-stricken, by the muddy flood when the earth of roadways was eroded relentlessly away beneath their feet. Others, more fortunate, reached higher ground; but even they were hardly better situated, for they were cut off without sufficient food or clothing. Disease set in; death threatened hideously the survivors who existed now in wretched deprivation on the tops of hills or ridges. Helpless in themselves, they stolidly awaited help; and yet they knew that for many of their number it would not come in time.

“THE Mississippi had been in flood stage nearly a week before Nick Wentworth, chief pilot of the U. S. Air Patrol, received orders from Stiles, of the Treasury Department, to drop his work with prohibition and narcotic officers on the Border and proceed with all his ships to Little Rock for work under a representative of the Army seventh corps area. The quartet of Patrol pilots departed at once, arriving in the Arkansas town in the afternoon of the day Nick received his orders. They reported to Major Morehouse, of the Army Air Corps, for instructions. The Major, an austere man who had been harried almost to a nervous collapse during the past three days, explained the situation quickly.

“The water covers the entire river district,” he told them. “Some of the smaller towns near the Mississippi are completely submerged, and most of the people who lived in them are camped for the time being in emergency quarters on high ground—out of danger if the water doesn’t rise, or if disease doesn’t become too prevalent. Conditions are frightful. We can’t hope to do very much in getting these people out of the flooded area entirely, but we can take food and medical supplies forward and drop them wherever they are needed. I’ll want all four of your planes in the air constantly; I’ll have mechanics at your disposal so you can save your energy for flying. What we want is action—speed; you’ve no idea of what the people down there are going through.”

“What about landing-fields?” Nick asked.

“I’ll send you down to Monticello tomorrow. A small field is available there, and in a few days a new field at Pine Bluff should be finished—” A telephone at the Major’s elbow jangled restlessly, and he paused to answer it. He listened tensely, nodding his head and speaking a word of confirmation or denial occasionally, scratching down figures and jumbled words upon a pad of paper as the information was forthcoming. Presently he hung up the receiver and turned back to the Patrol pilots. His face was grave.

“Have any of you men had experience flying big ships—transports?” he asked. “Quick,” he added, when no one spoke for a moment. “Wentworth, can you fly an Army transport?”

Nick had had some experience with the large planes used by the Army in transporting passengers and supplies, but he was by no means an expert in handling one of them, especially under the operating conditions he knew he would encounter in bad weather and wet landing-fields. But the Major’s manner forewarned him of some emergency to be met, and he replied, “Yes, sir, Major. What’s up?”

“Train wreck. Piled up down near McLearson—trying to get through with supplies before the roadbed washed out. Hit a soft place in a fill and went into a ditch. Engine crew hurt badly, and a brakeman isn’t expected to pull through—engine fell on him when it went over—both legs crushed.”

“Where’s the plane I’m to take?” Nick asked.

“Wait,” said the Major. “There’s no place for you to land at McLearson. The nearest landing-field is at Plateau—twelve miles north of there. You’ll have to get a boat at Plateau and go after ’em. You land at Plateau and I’ll try to get word through that you’re on the way. I’ll have the ship fixed up with three stretchers and a place for a doctor.” He telephoned his orders to the crew-chief of the plane, then turned back to Nick. “If you can’t get down at Plateau, find a landing-field as near McLearson as you can, then go back to the wreck and drop a note telling them where you’re going to land. You’ve got only three hours of daylight left, so you’ll have to hurry. I can’t send a mechanic with you because they’ve got more work than they can do—rush stuff. I’ll put your other pilots to work.”

NICK found his plane—a single-motored Douglas—in the hangar, with mechanics just finishing the transformation of its cabin to an ambulance. He waited impatiently while these men pushed the huge plane out on the flying-field and warmed up its motor; then, after a final scrutiny of his map, he climbed up into the cockpit.

The flying-field was muddy to such an extreme that any kind of flying from it was hazardous. Ten days of ceaseless rain, falling in a slow drizzle that allowed the water on the ground to soak in, had transformed the sodded surface into a slushy expanse of blackish, soupy mud that was flung from the revolving wheels of the ship like spray from the bow of a racing speedboat. The Douglas was slow in starting to roll over the ground; it was slower yet in lifting itself, light as was its load, but finally it climbed awkwardly into the air. Nick turned quickly away from the field, making no effort to climb for altitude, and settled the ship upon a compass course that would take him directly to McLearson, seventy-five miles to the southeast.

Fifteen miles out of Little Rock he crossed the engorged Arkansas River, its waters flattened out over an area of ten miles on either side of the main channel. The water looked like some huge tropical lake, with weather-blackened vegetation jutting raggedly up through the surface and extending a few feet into the air. Here and there was a high ridge or hill, and not infrequently Nick could distinguish the tents of refugees pitched in precarious uncertainty upon their topmost areas.

Occasionally, and with increasing recurrence as he neared the badly flooded area, a rowboat flicked past under the wings of the racing plane—rescuers seeking out the isolated people stranded upon the tops of barns and houses. These men waved as the plane passed over them, and Nick waved in response. Almost paralleling the course of the Arkansas, Nick presently passed a town, the low buildings of which were all engulfed in the sluggish flood. In the railroad yards, as he passed, he saw the tops of freight cars; and a few hundred yards up the track from the station a locomotive was stalled, canted on the rails, as if the roadbed had partially been torn away from under it.

AFTER fifty minutes in the air Nick saw McLearson, and he turned to the left and followed the invisible track toward where he expected to see the wreckage of the train. He knew, from his map, that McLearson was at the end of the railroad, and he observed, when he passed the town, that it was almost completely out of water. It was situated on high ground, and the flood had not as yet climbed to that level. Fields surrounding the town were water-soaked and glistening; they were without exception small, and partially or completely surrounded by tall timber. Nick examined them appraisingly as he passed, but could not find one that would be suitable. There was only one in which he could have landed, and with three men and a doctor in the cabin of the plane, he would have no chance of taking off again.

The railway yards in McLearson were out of water, but immediately north of the town the right-of-way dropped into a cut and out of sight. Nick, taking his direction from the portion of the track that he could see, flew up the road for two miles, found the wrecked train, and circled over it.

The locomotive had left the track and was lying now upon its side in the water a few feet from the edge of the rails. The cab and tender were more than half hidden by the muddy water. When he saw the engine Nick wondered how the crew had escaped at all!

The first box-car also had left the rails, but had remained upright, and was now standing in water that covered the trucks and lapped at the bottom of the car. The other cars of the train—three—had not been derailed, and from the platform of the caboose two men waved excitedly as Nick passed them at a low altitude. He raised his hand in a return salute, then flew on toward Plateau.

SINCE leaving McLearson, he had been wondering how the injured men could be brought ten or twelve miles in a boat in time for the plane to return to Little Rock before darkness set in. If the brakeman were in serious condition, it would prove difficult to transfer him without increased injury to his wounds. If the case were as urgent as seemed apparent, a landing at Plateau would take too long! For ten minutes he flew, holding, as near as he could estimate, the line of the right-of-way. The water, as he proceeded, was deeper; the track was nowhere evident.

At Plateau, although the town was above the flood level, the flying-field was almost completely submerged. At one corner of the area, fluttering in damp dejection, the “wind sock” showed that the wind still blew from the northeast. Nick looked the place over and shook his head. He was doubtful about attempting a landing there; after several moments’ consideration he decided that the pasture at McLearson would prove better, so he turned back and raced downwind.

From the platform of the caboose, men waved excitedly as Nick passed them.

The “field” at McLearson was in reality a farmer’s rye pasture. The green shoots had pushed themselves through the water-soaked soil and into open air; yet they did not form a sod, and Nick could see, even from the air, that his plane’s wheels would sink down into the mud so far that there was a possibility of “nosing over” when he landed. On three sides of the pasture pine trees lifted themselves forty feet into the air; on the fourth side—the one toward which Nick would approach in landing— there was only a low fence, which, at one point, dipped down into a ravine and then up again to the level of the ground.

The field sloped rather steeply from the fence up toward the trees; and the wind was blowing up the hill. Nick had his choice of landing over the trees, into the wind and downhill, or over the fence and uphill—but downwind. And the wind at his back increased the possibilities of the plane nosing over when its wheels sank into the mud. But landing up the hill was the only logical way, for the trees were so tall that if he approached the field over them he could not settle the ship to the ground before he reached the fence.

He cut his gun and glided in, rolling the stabilizer back until the plane was decidedly tail-heavy. He came in on a long glide, downwind, and crossed the fence at five feet above the ground, gunning his motor spasmodically to keep the ship in the air until it was over the fence. He cut his gun, jerking the lever back violently, and pulled his control-wheel back into his stomach with both hands. The plane settled into the mud with a soft splash; the mud from the spinning wheels slapped up against the taut fabric of the wings with a crackle like the splattering of hail on a tin roof.

The muck clutched at the tires and dragged them down; the plane, with the flippers hard up, reared its tail off the ground and tried to bury its nose into the mud in front of it, but Nick slammed the throttle open before the propeller was far enough down to flick the ground. The propeller blast slapped back at the tail, but at the same time it pulled forward on the plane, and thus created forces that opposed each other. While the tail tended to be blown down into its proper position, the wheels were almost stuck, and tended to nose the ship downward. The tail remained four feet in the air—higher than normal take-off position—and gradually the plane decelerated to a pace that permitted safe taxying. The mud was so deep that at fifteen hundred revolutions of the propeller, the ship barely crept over the ground.

“I’ve gummed things now!” Nick muttered, when the ship had stopped. “We’ll never get out of this field before next summer! That brakeman will have to stay where he is.”

But, hopeless as he was of taking off from the field again, he left the Douglas in a corner of the field and hurried to town. He went first to the depot, and routed out the station agent.

“Where’re the men who got hurt in the train wreck?” he asked. “I’m down here with an airplane—an ambulance—to take them to a hospital.”

“Up the track a piece,” the agent replied. “The conductor walked back through the water and told us about ’em, but there haint nothin’ we can do about it.”

“Do? Haven’t you got a boat?”

“No, haint a boat in McLearson. The conductor, he thought they’d send a seaplane down here for ’em—they’re still up there in the caboose. I reckon that brakeman’s sufferin’ suthin’ too, the way he got that engine on his legs! Wouldn’t be surprised they’d have to amp’tate them legs. Mirac’lous, too; he’d oughtta been drowned, but somehow or other he got out from under that engine!”

NICK looked at his watch. He had consumed an hour and twenty-five minutes of precious time in getting to McLearson; only slightly more than that amount remained before darkness, and at all costs he must be in the air before night: he knew that he would never get out of the field after dusk—if he did then.

“Got a hand-car around here?” he asked the agent.

“Nothin’ but a push-car—you couldn’t do no good with that. The water’d come up over the top of it. We thought o’ that, but we knew we’d drownd them fellers if we tried to bring ’em through on a push-car.”

“Where is it? We’re going after those men. Is a doctor up there with them?”

“Sure, they’s a doctor up there—walked up through the water. But I’m a-tellin’ you, you can’t do no good with a push-car.”

“Get it!” Nick snapped, and the agent moved with alacrity to obey. While he was gone Nick looked around the yards. A pile of ties stood back of one switch, and he estimated their weight.

“Now, Mister,” he told the agent, when the man returned, “we’re going to load this car with ties so the tops of them are out of water, and we’re going after those men! Are you good at pushing?”

In spite of his objections and his insistence that it could not be accomplished, the agent helped Nick pile two layers of ties upon the hand-car, and together they pushed it up the main track toward the wreck. It was, at best, a slow progress that they made; at times the water rose so high that it floated the ties, and when that occurred one of them climbed up upon the stack and weighted it down. They pushed through cuts and over fills, all of them invisible under the murky water, and after forty minutes arrived at the rear of the caboose.

Two of the men who had waved to Nick were standing on the platform of the car waiting for him. One of them wore the cap of a railroad conductor; the other was dressed in business clothes.

“You the doctor?” Nick asked the latter, and without awaiting a reply added: “I landed my ship at McLearson. As soon as we get the men on board it I’ll have them to a hospital in Little Rock within forty-five minutes—or kill them trying to get off the ground.”

Doctor Matthies, a short, stumpy man, still very wet from his walk through the water from town, introduced himself.

“We’d kill the brakeman if we tried to take him to town on a hand-car through this water,” he said. “We thought of trying that, but he’s too weak to be moved with safety. He ought to be in a hospital—quickly; but we can’t take him there on any hand-car!”

“That’s what I been a-tellin’ him all the way out here!” the station agent said resentfully. “But he don’t seem like one to—”

“Shut up!” Nick barked. “Doctor Matthies, I landed just as close to the wreck as I could get. This hand-car is the only way to get the men to my ship. If the brakeman can’t be moved, suppose you stay here with him and I’ll take the others to town. I’ve got to hurry—it’ll be dark in a little while and I’ll have—”

A woman’s wail inside the caboose startled him. He heard the groans of one of the injured men.

“What the hell!” he ejaculated. “Is a woman out here too?”

“The brakeman’s daughter,” Doctor Matthies replied. “She came out with me as soon as we got word. Couldn’t keep her at home—insisted on coming. She waded out through that water right behind me!”

JUST at that moment the girl came to the doorway of the car and stood, a handkerchief clutched in her hands, looking at the four men. She was sobbing brokenly; there was about her a note of tragedy, Nick thought, but at the same time fortitude. Through tear-filled eyes she looked quickly from one man to the other.

“Can’t you do something?” she choked. “Don’t just let him lie there like that and suffer and—and—”

“We’ll do everything we can, Miss Richardson,” Doctor Matthies assured her gravely. “Try not to worry about your father.” He went with her back into the car.

“What about the others?” Nick asked the conductor. “Are they badly hurt?”

“Burns, mostly. The hoghead has a broken arm, but Doc set it for him and he’s resting pretty easy now, I guess. Tallowpot—that’s the fireman—was on the high side when the engine went over. He got burned some, but not bad. We were running slow—water up to the axles of the drivers; I don’t see yet why all of ’em weren’t drowned.... Damn this rain!”

Doctor Matthies emerged from the caboose. “Richardson is likely to die at any time,” he told them in a whisper. “I’m sure he can’t last two more hours unless we get him to a hospital. He’s losing blood, and I can’t help him much—and she’s willing to risk it. He wont die any quicker, I suppose, on that hand-car than he will lying in there. Let’s try to take him along—we might save him.”

“All right,” said Nick. “I’d like to speak to Miss Richardson a moment.” He called softly to her, and she came out to the platform. “My ship is stuck in the mud at McLearson,” he told her, “and I’ll need all the men you can get for me. I want you to hurry back to town and get all the men in town out to my ship. It’s in a field on the north side. Now hurry.” The girl nodded. “You hurry, too,” she said, and stepping down into the water, she started out along the track.

ONE at a time the three injured men were carried out and placed on top of the ties upon the hand-car. The enginemen were able to sit up, although in terrible pain, and one of them was placed at each end of the car. Richardson, the brakeman, was laid between them, and covered with what blankets and coats were available. The ends of the ties were lashed together with some small rope that was found in the caboose, making a raft that could not break up when higher water was reached.

Slowly, for the water was rising and was higher than when the outbound trip had been made, Nick and the conductor and the station agent started pushing the hand-car along the track. Doctor Matthies rode upon the car, watching the ebb and flow of Richardson’s pulse with tense concentration.

The rain, which had fallen most of the morning in a slow drizzle, had ceased about midafternoon; but now it commenced again, dribbling down from lowered clouds. Nick watched the weather apprehensively, fearing that fog might set in as dusk approached.

As they pushed the car the three men walked in water that came almost to their hips. Their coat sleeves, being in water almost continually, soaked up moisture and let it drain down against their bodies, bringing even more discomfort. They stumbled for a footing on the submerged ties below their feet, and more than once one of them would have fallen if he had been unable to grasp the ropes that bound the ties, and thus support himself more firmly. Progress through the water was won only by torture; it was an ordeal in which stamina and time alone could win.

Progress through the water was an ordeal in which stamina and time only could win.

All three men were tired, Nick and the station man from pushing the hand-car to the wreck; the conductor from his walk to McLearson to report the accident. For nearly an hour they labored through the rising water, saying little to each other, each bent upon conserving his strength until the goal was reached.

At times the water lapped at the top layer of ties, almost floating them in spite of the weight of the four men who rode there. When the water was at its deepest, as when crossing fills in the railroad, progress was even slower; yet somehow they slowly won advancement and kept the car creeping through the rising flood.

AFTER an hour of almost insurmountable difficulty they passed through the last cut and rolled the car out of the water toward the station. From that point on, their progress was much faster; they broke into a ragged trot, using up the last of their energy in an effort to get speed.

The streets of McLearson, though a veritable mire, were passable for motor traffic, and Nick and Doctor Matthies loaded the three injured men into an automobile and proceeded as quickly as possible to the edge of town where the Douglas was waiting. Dusk was lowering down upon them; the light of day was already failing and the rain had increased and fell in fitful, gusty showers. The men were transferred from the car to the stretchers of the plane, and Nick hurriedly examined the line of his take-off. He walked the full length of the field—some seven hundred feet—noting holes and ridges he must avoid when he started the mad rush to get off the ground. He noticed that at one point along the fence—where the ravine intersected it—there was danger of striking his wing against the bank, yet because of the added slope at this point he decided to take off toward it. He walked back to the plane quickly, knowing that he had less than fifteen minutes of daylight still remaining.

When he returned to the ship he found about thirty men and boys who had come to the field at the girl’s request. He cautioned them about the propeller, then climbed into the cockpit and started his motor, returning to the ground, while it warmed up, to instruct the men in aiding him to make the take-off.

“This field’s too muddy to get started rolling unless you help me,” he said to them. “First, I want six men to go to the end of the field”—he pointed out the ravine to them—“and wait there. I may crash this ship, and if I do there’ll probably be a bonfire. You wont have a chance to get me out—I’ll be right in the middle of it—but you can get the Doctor and the men out of the cabin if you’re right there when it happens, and work fast.”

“THE six men whom he had selected tramped off through the mud and rain, and Nick turned to the others. Under his instructions they picked up the tail of the Douglas and rolled the ship back until the tail-surfaces were almost against the fence; then, with the Patrol pilot telling each of them where to stand, they stationed themselves in two groups at the trailing edge of the lower wings, each man having a handhold on the wing.

“When I open the throttle,” said Nick, “I want every man of you to push like hell! I mean push! Run with the ship just as long as you can keep up with it pushing—but don’t trail along behind after it is going faster than you can run. When you let go of the wing, look out you don’t get hit by the tail—step to one side and get out of the way.”

“HE climbed into the cockpit again and settled himself in the seat. He was surprised, just as he was ready to gun his motor, by the girl’s appearance through the passageway between the pilot’s compartment and the passenger’s room to the rear. She stepped up through the aisleway and seated herself at Nick’s side.

“The Doctor wont let me ride back there,” she said without emotion. “I wanted to be near my daddy all the time, but he wont let me. I’ll have to ride up here.”

“You’d better climb down,” Nick replied hurriedly. “There’s no telling what may happen to this plane—we may all be killed. I don’t want you on board if we crash.”

The girl looked up at him gravely, but made no move to get out of the cockpit.

“Hurry!” Nick ordered. “It’s almost dark and I’ve got to get away from here! I can’t take you.”

“I wont get out,” she said, without raising her voice. “My daddy is in this airplane and I’m going to stay near him. If we—if we have an accident and all get killed—well, I’m not going to get out, anyhow!”

“Listen, girl,” Nick snapped, “I haven’t got time to listen to the whims of anybody! I’m trying to save your father’s life. Now you get back there on the ground—and get there in a hurry! It’s getting dark!”

“I wont! You’ll have to throw me out! My father will need me when we get to the hospital, and this is the only way I can get there.” She began to sob. “Anyway,”—she looked at him pitifully,—“anyway, he’s my papa and—and—”

“All right,” said Nick, as gently as his temper would permit; “but get that safety belt around you.” He helped her fasten the safety belt around her waist. “I don’t want any of my passengers thrown out on their necks when we turn over.”

He made a last inspection of the plane, then unbuckled his own belt and climbed to the ground. He let the air out of both tires, so that they were almost entirely deflated, and presented a flat cushion to the mud.

“Almost forgot that!” He grinned at the waiting men. “All ready? Now for God’s sakes push!”

“IN the cockpit again he opened the radiator shutters so that the motor wouldn’t boil under the labor of the take-off, raised his goggles to his forehead so that his eyes would be free from shattering glass in case the plane crashed at the end of the field, and pressed the throttle slowly forward until it struck the end of the slot. The motor picked up its revolutions slowly—it was swinging a big propeller—and gradually the ship began to roll, mushing down into the soft mud as each foot of advance was gained. Nick felt its tendency to nose-over as it picked up a little speed, and he was forced to pull his flippers up to prevent the nose from burying itself in the ground, although in doing that he knew that he prolonged the take-off. Half the length of the field had been used before the men who were pushing against ship began to drop away from their places at the wings; when that much speed had been obtained the acceleration was fairly rapid, and within a hundred feet more the last man let go his hold upon the wing and flung himself upon his face to dodge the tail of the ship as it flicked over him.

The take-off had been made directly toward the ravine, just as Nick had planned it, but he expected the Douglas to pick up speed quicker than it did. When the edge of the ravine was reached, the fence still fifty feet away, it was not yet in the air. It rolled over the edge of the ravine and settled down, picking up speed more quickly because of the greater slope. Slowly it began to rise; it was clearing the ground nicely when the wing-tip on the right side struck the bank of the declivity with a soft, sickening sound. The ship swung sharply, shuddering and almost out of control, to the right; for a moment it seemed to hesitate as if wavering just before a fatal plunge into the ground. But Nick was quick on the controls; he wound the wheel hard over and leveled the plane in time to prevent the crash; he looked out along the right wing and saw that three feet of the wing-tip had been torn away, and was hanging now, an inert but dangerous mass of débris, to the spars and wires of the wing structure.

“WITH full aileron control depressing the left wing of the plane, it would fly level, but try as he might, Nick could not roll the ship into a left bank. He skidded the Douglas around in a left turn, hoping to increase the lift on the right wing enough to bring it up into a higher-than-normal position, which would have offset to some degree the decreased lifting surface of the right wing caused by the accident. He eased the plane around, finally reaching the direction which he must fly toward Little Rock, but the plane was still flying level—with the aileron control hard over to the left side.

Above him now, Nick saw the darker gloom of wet clouds, three hundred feet above the earth. At times he flew in the base of them, the black water of the earth invisible below. Rain still filtered out of the clouds, and the ship flew into it and brought it back into the faces of Nick and the girl with a velocity that made it feel like grape-shot. It was almost impossible to face it, yet it must be faced; refuge behind the windshield of the ship was impossible—the utter black of the night required constant vigilance.

“FOR perhaps five minutes the Douglas handled normally enough that Nick was able to hold it on its course, flying by “feel” and his compass and his altimeter. A gnawing fear of a hidden hill or ridge in front of him clutched at the Patrol pilot; he had had friends who met their death by colliding with such barriers, made invisible by fog or darkness. From the disablement of the plane itself there seemed no immediate danger of a crash; it was extremely right-wing-heavy, but still manageable.

He was seven minutes away from McLearson, battling doggedly with the Douglas, when he felt a severe shock against his controls. He could not see what had happened, because of the darkness, but a moment later he felt the plane rolling into a right bank. He realized, then, that some part of the injured wing had given way. He did not know whether a crash would result immediately or not, but he knew that the crash would come, in spite of everything he could do. He experienced a pang of regret for the injured men—they would never see a hospital; if not killed in the crash, they would drown in the angry water into which they would be thrown when the ship lunged in!

The girl beside Nick had seen the wing strike the bank and had seen him struggling with the controls since that time. Perhaps she understood something of what was taking place, but that realization produced no display of emotion. She looked at the damaged wing, then at Nick, then down into the blackness beyond which the ugly waters of the flood were concealed. She looked back at Nick—and smiled!

The Douglas had been rolling into a steeper bank momentarily. Nick knew that it was a matter of a few seconds until it would tilt up and slide off into the ground—unless, by some means, a weight could be placed on the left wing to counteract the decreased lifting surface of the right one. He placed his lips to the girl’s ear and shouted out his lungs above the roar of the motor.

“Going to crash!” he yelled. “Climb out on the left wing to balance the ship! Hurry!”

The girl nodded. Nick unbuckled her safety belt with a single fling of his hand, and she stepped up on the cowling just behind the cockpit. Slowly, fighting for every inch of progress against the biting wind and the sting of rain, she made her way to the edge of the fuselage and down upon the left lower wing. The force of the propeller blast struck her and slammed her up against the cutting edges of the streamlined flying-wires; by the pale glow of the exhaust Nick could see her clutching desperately to hold her place. She moved farther out upon the wing, and Nick lost her in the darkness; but he knew that she made progress because the ship slowly began to right itself. As she neared the wing-tip the plane resumed normal flying position.

“CLINGING against the strut, clutching the icy metal to save her life and the lives of all the men in the plane, the girl fought the cold and fatigue and growing numbness for forty minutes. Nick opened his throttle wide and the ship plunged through the darkness at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, despite the resistance of the débris that clung to the jagged spars of the broken wing-tip. He flew entirely by his compass now; the lights of towns below had been blotted out when the flood waters destroyed power-lines. He wondered how long the girl could stay there, for he realized the fight she was putting up to cling to the strut.

The lights of Little Rock blinked up ahead of them at last, and Nick circled the field and landed by the beacon light. The plane rolled out of the beam, and Nick turned back to the hangar. He taxied to the “line” and without stopping his motor scrambled out along the wing to help Miss Richardson to the ground.

But she was not there!

“NICK was stunned. He pictured her being torn from the strut by the fury of the wind; he visualized her falling into the black waters of the flood. Then he realized that she had fallen to the ground after he had landed; otherwise the plane would have been unbalanced, and he would have been unable to maintain it on an even keel. She was somewhere on the flying-field, probably having fallen in exhaustion, when the Douglas landed.

Borrowing a flashlight, and leaving the injured men to the care of Doctor Matthies, Nick hurried out across the flying-field, throwing the beam of light ahead of him, swinging it back and forth across the wheel tracks and out into the misty gloom of the flying-field. He broke into a run, splashing through the mud wearily. He reached the point where he had turned the ship out of the beacon light, then hunted downwind in the darkness toward the point where the plane’s wheels first had touched the ground.

Failing to find her there, he retraced his steps to the plane—and found her almost under the wing, lying prostrate in the muddy water of the field, unconscious and exhausted from her struggle with the elements of Nature. He picked her up gently and carried her to where an ambulance was waiting.

In the ambulance, with Nick and Doctor Matthies riding by her side, she opened her eyes and looked vaguely around her. She recognized them both presently; then her gaze wandered out the window of the car. At last she looked back at them.

“We made it, didn’t we?” she asked weakly. “Will—will Daddy get all right?”

Doctor Matthies patted her hand. “He’ll be all right,” he said softly. “He’s better now—he’s at the hospital.”

She was silent again for several minutes, and then smiled wanly.

“I’m sorry I fell off—I didn’t know what happened—I was so cold. If Papa just gets well—”

“Try to sleep now,” said the Doctor. “You can see him in the morning.”

“I knew he would get well—if I could just stay out there on that wing.... I’m sure he will—now....” And a moment later, to Nick: “Sometime, when you’re not too busy, could I take a ride with you—inside your airplane?”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 1929 issue of The Blue Book Magazine.

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Table of Contents

Flood Waters

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