Irwin R. Franklyn

During the hour that Lefty proudly piloted the ship across mountains, rivers and an impenetrable jungle, conscious of the pleasant task that rested upon his shoulders, he enjoyed a good ceiling and clear sailing.

The only thing that darkened his sudden touch of glory was his deep concern over Panama’s condition.

“What a terrible, unfair Fate it would be,” he thought, “if anything should happen to old Panama now, after all we have gone through?”

He looked back to make certain that the sergeant was comfortable and cognizant of what was going on around them.

Each time he turned his head, his eyes met those of the wounded man’s who smiled back gamely, pantomiming to the boy to watch his stick and keep the ship leveled.

It was dusk by the time the lone plane circled over the field at Managua. The major and his aides, as well as Elinor and a group of ground men, stood watching the approaching mechanical bird flying toward them.

“That’s Williams’ ship all right,” Harding announced, “and he’s got somebody with him!”

Elinor, consumed with thrilling suspense, listened eagerly to the major’s disclosure. Next to where she stood, an officer was focusing a pair of army binoculars upon the plane now circling the field.

Without as much as an apology, she excitedly grabbed the glasses from the man’s hands and leveled them on the ship, her heart action increasing by leaps and bounds as she joyfully shouted: “It’s Lefty! It’s Lefty and he’s flying the ship!”

The major gazed at the girl with an expression of doubt, accepting the binoculars as she held them out to him and focusing them upward on the plane.

By that time, several other pilots had reached the field and joined the excited group as they watched Lefty pilot the ship with a masterly hand.

Panama looked down at the crowd below, then leaned forward with great exertion and screamed into the pilot’s ear: “They’re all there watching you. Go ahead and show ’em you can do something!”

“But how about you?” the boy yelled back. “You’re badly hurt!”

“Never mind me,” the sergeant laughed hoarsely. “Give ’em a real show!”

With that, Panama took keen delight in unscrewing the joy stick in the rear cockpit, contemptuously raising it above his head and throwing it overboard.

Lefty watched this gallant gesture on the part of the unselfish sergeant and grinned with appreciation, realizing that Williams’ idea in throwing the other stick was to leave no doubt upon the minds of those below as to who deserved the laurels for the successful flight.

The wheel of the landing gear from which the hub had been shot to pieces by the bandit marksman back in the swamps, was slowly revolving upon its loose axle, certain to cause a serious injury to the passengers of the plane if it fell or broke before they landed.

Ignorant of this dangerous problem that faced them, Lefty turned the plane into a stunt, doing a slow loop, followed by an easy roll and then a fast one, creating a beautiful spectacle against the darkening sky.

Major Harding moved nervously from one foot to the other with eyes glued upon the stunting ship above.

“What’s that crazy fool trying to do?” he roared with impatience.

As for Elinor, she was beside herself with anxiety and perplexity, suddenly feeling a trifle easier as she spied the commander’s lips curl in a sly grin.

“And I was the one that said he couldn’t fly!” Harding admitted with enthusiasm.

Lefty then piloted the ship into an Immelman turn, followed by a spin and a dive through the nearest company street as the men below scattered in all directions.

As the ship once more turned its nose upward and again gained altitude, the wheel slipped off the landing gear and fell to the ground, in plain view of the audience of pilots, officers and ground men.

One of the mechanics ran forward and picked up the wheel, holding it high above his head to inform Lefty that his landing gear was damaged. The boy caught sight of the warning gesture and as his expression of triumph once more became overshadowed with gravity, he realized the danger that awaited them, thinking first of Panama’s safety.

Elinor, suddenly transfixed with horror, was another of the audience who saw the wheel fall as did the major who, with a trained presence of mind, ordered the man nearest to him to call out the ambulance.

“I lost a wheel!” the boy shouted back to the sergeant in the rear cockpit who replied by lifting his head and laughing with fiendish merriment.

“You better take the ’chute and jump for it!” Lefty yelled, indicating the parachute. “I’ll stick and attempt to land her safely.”

“Not me,” the hard-boiled top kick called back. “I’m gonna stay right along and see what you’re gonna do!”

They both secretly became a trifle sick at heart and felt a heavy lump in their stomachs as they heard the shrill blast of the ambulance below and, looking out, saw the men in white uniforms hurrying across the field, bearing stretchers.

The boy rose and managed to place some cushions around Panama who scoffed angrily over the unwarranted attention paid to him.

Once more at the controls, he dived down just as the fire crew reached the field and the men left the truck, carrying axes and extinguishers, ready for an immediate and impending emergency.

The ship hit the ground with a thud, taxiing along the field on one wheel in a perfect landing. Finally losing speed, the other end of the axle struck into the earth and the plane spun around in a circle without causing either injury or damage.

When the ship finally came to a sudden stop, the crowd on the field rushed forward and surrounded the two men still seated in the cockpits.

Among the group was the major, whose face plainly showed his pride and happiness over the skillful landing. He confronted the boy with a beaming, warm smile as Lefty jumped out of the ship.

Almost inarticulate in his praise, he wasted no time in freeing the silver wings from above his left breast pocket and pinning them on Lefty, saying: “Take mine, son, until I can get you a pair of your own!”

“Take mine, son, until I can get you a pair of your own!”

Ever since the first minute he had entered the Flying Corps, the boy had lived for the great day when his efforts and craftsmanship would earn him his wings. Now that the glorious moment had arrived, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the solemn procedure, for over to the right of the plane, Elinor stood alone, her cheeks flushed crimson with pride for the man she idolized.

She threw pride to the winds and, with strong determination, walked directly to the spot where Lefty awaited her coming with suppressed eagerness.

Just as he took her in his arms, unmindful of the others about them who watched the procedure interestedly, two Bed Cross men carried Panama from the plane and, at the sergeant’s command, brought him over to where the lovers stood in a warm embrace.

“What did I tell you about that Lindbergh stuff?” Panama called to the boy as a wide grin spread over his face from ear to ear, and then gazing at Elinor with a look of unselfish devotion, assured the girl in no uncertain manner, “Well, even if you didn’t get ‘We’ you sure landed the next best thing!”

The boy and girl smiled after the sergeant with gratitude and as the medical attendants carried him off, they once more became locked in each others arms, sealing the joining together at last with a long, lingering kiss.

Major Harding ran across the field after Williams, finally joining up with the sergeant as the attendants carried him down the company street to his tent.

“Sergeant!” the commander panted, “I won’t forget your bravery this time! I’m going to see that you get a medal if I have to go all the way back to Washington and fetch it for you myself!”

Williams smiled in a sly, mischievous way as he watched Lefty and Elinor walk across the field, arm in arm, wrapped completely in their new-found happiness.

“Better save all that expense, sir,” he advised the major in his typical droll manner of speech, “there’s goin’ to be a weddin’ around this base soon and them kids will be needin’ dishes and things!”

The End

There’s More to Follow!

More stories of the sort you like; more, probably, by the author of this one; more than 500 titles all told by writers of world-wide reputation, in the Authors’ Alphabetical List which you will find on the reverse side of the wrapper of this book. Look it over before you lay it aside. There are books here you are sure to want—some, possibly, that you have always wanted.

It is a selected list; every book in it has achieved a certain measure of success.

The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only the greatest Index of Good Fiction available, it represents in addition a generally accepted Standard of Value. It will pay you to

Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper

In case the wrapper is lost write to the publishers for a complete catalog.

PERCIVAL C. WREN’S NOVELS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s List

This brilliant chronicler of the French Foreign Legion is an Englishman born in Devonshire and educated at Oxford. He is a veteran of three armies, the crack British Cavalry Corps, the French Foreign Legion and the Indian Army in East Africa.

BEAU GESTE

Mystery, courage, love, self sacrifice, adventure on the burning sands of North Africa—in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion.

BEAU SABREUR

A sequel to Beau Geste in which the age old spell of the desert is the background for a tale of mystery.

STEPSONS OF FRANCE

A book of short stories whose scenes are laid in the same fascinating and desolate country as Beau Geste—Northern Africa—and whose characters are fighters in the Legion.

WAGES OF VIRTUE

A modern Enoch Arden reappears and goes back to remain “dead” in the Legion of the Condemned, but his story comes out at last.

FATHER GREGORY

Mystery and Father Gregory play a desperate game on a picturesque background of Hindustan. Written with gusto by the author of “Beau Geste.”

THE SNAKE AND THE SWORD

Another romance of the East by the author of the Foreign Legion stories. The fascinating mystery of Kipling’s India is the background for a strange love.

DRIFTWOOD SPARS

The soul of a man in whose soul the East and West has met—his father of Pathan birth, his mother of Scotch. Laid in India, it is a romance of mystery and tragedy.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK

THE NOVELS OF SINCLAIR LEWIS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s List.

Within the space of a few years Sinclair Lewis has become one of the most Distinguished of American Novelists.

ELMER GANTRY

Elmer Gantry, hypocrite and voluptuary, is painted against a background of church members and professing Christians scarcely less hypocritical than he. In this book Sinclair Lewis adds a violent stroke to his growing picture of materialistic America.

MANTRAP

A clever satire on the adventures of a New York lawyer seeking rest and diversion in the northwoods. Instead of rest he finds trouble in the person of his host’s wife—young, pretty and flirtatious.

ARROWSMITH

The story of a country doctor whose search for truth led him to the heights of the medical profession, to the heights and depths of love and marriage and to final peace as a quietly heroic laboratory worker in the backwoods of Vermont.

BABBITT

Every man will recognize in the character of George Babbitt, something of himself. He was a booster and a joiner, but behind all of his activities was a wistful wonder as to what life holds.

MAIN STREET

Carol Kennicott’s attempt to bring life and culture to Gopher Prairie and Gopher Prairie’s reaction toward her teachings have made this book one of the most famous of the last decade.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK

STIRRING TALES OF THE GREAT WAR

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WAR BIRDS ... The Diary of an Unknown Aviator

Soaring, looping, zooming, spitting hails of leaden death, planes everywhere in a war darkened sky. WAR BIRDS is a tale of youth, loving, fighting, dying.

SERGEANT EADIE ... Leonard Nason

This is the private history of the hard luck sergeant whose exploits in CHEVRONS made that story one of the most dramatic and thrilling of war books.

WINGS ... John Monk Saunders

Based on the great Paramount picture, WINGS is the Big Parade of the air, the gallant, fascinating story of an American air pilot.

LEAVE ME WITH A SMILE ... Elliott W. Springs

Henry Winton, a famous ace, thrice decorated, twice wounded and many times disillusioned returns after the war to meet Phyllis, one of the new order of hard-drinking, unmoral girls.

NOCTURNE MILITAIRE ... Elliott White Springs

War, with wine and women, tales of love, madness, heroism; flyers reckless in their gestures toward life and death.

CHEVRONS ... Leonard Nason

One of the sensations of the post-war period, CHEVRONS discloses the whole pageantry of war with grim truth flavored with the breezy vulgarity of soldier dialogue.

THREE LIGHTS FROM A MATCH ... L. Nason

Three long short stories, each told with a racy vividness, the real terror in war with the sputter of machine guns.

TOWARD THE FLAME ... Hervey Allen

A maelstrom of tremendous incident along the American Front during the memorable summer of 1918. Magnificent and real.

THE LEGION OF THE CONDEMNED

A thriller of the eagles of the air, full of romance, chivalry and madcap bravery.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK

RAFAEL SABATINI’S NOVELS

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Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birthplace of Rafael Sabatini.

He first went to school in Switzerland and from there to Lycee of Oporto, Portugal, and has never attended an English school. But English is hardly an adopted language for him, as he learned it from his mother, an English woman.

Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as “The Alexandre Dumas of Modern Fiction.”

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK