start the engine, another squall
hit the machine and she almost turned over sidewise.

As the machine righted, the manager ran up and begged: "You never in
the world can make it in this wind, Hawk. Better not try it. I'll wire
for some money to get out of town with, and Onamwaska can go soak its
head."

"Nope. I'm gettin' sore now, Dick.... Hey you, mechanic: hurt that
wing when she tipped?... All right. Start her. Quick. While it's
calm."

The engine whirred. The assistants let go the tail. The machine
labored forward, but once it left the ground it shot up quickly. The
head-wind came in a terrific gust. The machine hung poised in air for
a moment, driven back by the gale nearly as fast as it was urged
forward by its frantically revolving propeller.

Carl was as yet too doubtful of his skill to try to climb above the
worst of the wind. If he could only keep a level course----

He fought his way up one side of the race-track. He crouched in his
seat, meeting the sandy blast with bent head. The parted lips which
permitted him to catch his breath were stubborn and hard about his
teeth. His hands played swiftly, incessantly, over the control as he
brought her back to even keel. He warped the wings so quickly that he
balanced like an acrobat sitting rockingly on a tight-wire. He was too
busy to be afraid or to remember that there was a throng of people
below him. But he was conscious that the grand stand, at the side of
the track, half-way down, was creeping toward him.

More every instant did he hate the clamor of the gale and the stream
of minute drops of oil, blown back from the engine, that spattered his
face. His ears strained for misfire of the engine, if it stopped he
would be hurled to earth. And one cylinder was not working. He forgot
that; kept the cloche moving; fought the wind with his will as with
his body.

Now, he was aware of the grand stand below him. Now, of the people at
the end of the track. He flew beyond the track, and turned. The whole
force of the gale was thrown behind him, and he shot back along the
other side of the race-track at eighty or ninety miles an hour.
Instantly he was at the end; then a quarter of a mile beyond the
track, over plowed fields, where upward currents of warm air
increased the pitching of the machine as he struggled to turn her
again and face the wind.

The following breeze was suddenly retarded and he dropped forty feet,
tail down.

He was only forty feet from t