Page:Flying Death.pdf/156

 He was on the ground, I realized; for no other airplane was in sight until one rose with two men aboard.

They flew above me, while the ground pilot kept me level and steady. The extra man in the new plane came aboard and brought me down to an unmarked meadow next to what appeared to be an ordinary farmhouse. Neither the pilot nor the two mechanics who inspected my machine furnished me any account of Bane or of Cawder. It was a stop for fuel, they told me; and immediately the pilot took me on.

He remained at the controls, not leaping and returning me to radio guidance, after we were again in the air; he brought me over the mountains and to the lake in the hold in the hills.

Having wheels, not pontoons, we landed on the green lawn to the east of the water where an empty three-seater stood, its engine giving off heat vapors.

The drawn-up doors of hangars displayed a dozen single-seaters, two-seaters, three and four, at which mechanics tinkered and tuned.