Puffs of cool wind began to bend the tall grass while Don and Garry bent and pulled back at the dory’s oars.

Rapidly the intensity of fitful flashes in the North increased, and the storm drew closer.

“Think we can make it?” gasped Garry.

“Hope so!” Don responded over his shoulder.

Ahead of them, but fully exposed to the blast of the coming tempest, lightning flashes revealed the torn, broken shape of the mail ’plane. If they could get there before the storm broke in its full fury they might rescue its pilot from the added menace of turbulent waters.

Already, while they were a quarter of a mile away, they saw that the time was all too short.

“Don!” called Garry, “I thought I saw a sort of path on the shore, along the water, when the lightning came that last time.”

“I thought this was all marshy, soft ground,” commented Don, “but it might be that we could get around to the mail crate quicker if there was solid earth to run on. Let’s try!”

They let the increasing wind drift them, aiding their efforts.

Bright and fierce, a flare of electric blue came across the sky. In its light they made out what looked like fairly firm earth, running in a swiftly narrowing strip from the mainland, a promontory jutting in a curving line into the grass-covered waters. If only that jut of land extended far enough they thought it possible to reach the smashed airplane by a safer route than the dory could afford. Already it dipped and rolled, as they drove its nose on the wash of foam into the soft bank between the grasses.

Holding tightly to a handful of the sturdy vegetation, Don began to progress into the bow. From the windward side Garry dug his oar into soft bottom, steadying their craft as well as he could.

The wind swept the stern around into the grass, but Don managed to get a leg over the bow, to test the firmness of the bank.

“I think it’s solid enough to hold us,” he cried, and got out of the dory, being careful to cling to the rope at the prow, lest his chum be drifted beyond the patch of solid ground, separating them and leaving Garry to battle alone against the surge of wind and water.

“It’s safe!” Don added. “I’ll hold the painter, Garry. Come on. Be careful to leave the oars in the bottom or the grass might pull them out of the boat.”

“I will!”

Garry picked up his first aid kit, stowed the oars, crawled forward and tumbled to a yielding sod which, nevertheless, did not break through.

Guiding themselves by the steadily increasing succession of lightning gleams, their voices drowned in the quickly following growls of thunder, wondering about the Dragonfly, about Scott, probably aloft in the Dart, Don and Garry went from the dory, tied to a root, along a perilous and unknown path.

Don, in the van, had to part clumps of tossing, cumbering grass to test the solidity of footing before he went ahead; Garry, clutching his kit and steadying his partner when a foot would miss the sometimes narrow band of safe path, followed.

As a glare of vivid fire, followed almost instantly by a peal of angry thunder, revealed the upthrust wing of the smashed craft within a few feet, to one side, Don stopped.

It had been apparent to them for several yards, as they parted the clumps of grass, that the way went no further.

“Can you lift me up, make a ‘back’ for me, do you think?” Garry asked as he carefully put down the first aid kit on the path they had just traversed.

Don, choosing his stand on what seemed to be the firmest spot—an old spar or block of driftwood embedded in the mud—bent forward, his hands braced on his knees. Lithely, with his gymnasium training to give him confidence, Garry put his weight on the elevated perch of Don’s back and leaped, forward, upward and outward, over the mud and water, as a chain of fiery light split the clouds to the roar of thunder.

Don, in that vivid flare, saw the lithe figure seemingly poised between sky and water, its outflung hands seeking for a grip on the leading edge of the wing that was closest to them.

Leaping up as soon as the weight left his supporting back, Don saw those hands strike their target—but the light died as it seemed to him that Garry slipped. Peals of celestial cannon drowned a cry if there was any. With eyes still blinded by the fierceness of the last flash, Don could not make out whether Garry had been able to hold his grip or if he struggled in ooze and quagmire, sinking, helpless.

“Garry!” he shouted.

From the North came another blaze of blue-white light.

Don gave a relieved cry. Garry, one foot braced against the junction of fuselage and flying wire, one hand clinging to the wire, was safe!

The moiled waters, reflecting the furious discharges of fire from above, were foaming across under the wind’s whip, and Don saw that if Garry did not find the object of his search quickly, it would be too late. Already the salty spume lashed his face, the fabric of the airplane quivered and shook to the beat of waves, and sunk in the soft mud, while wind under the wing failed to topple the whole craft onto the end of the promontory only because its trucks lay in clinging mud and steadied the ship.

From across the end of the grassy bank Don saw the distant glow of two red flares, smoking and guttering in the wind.

Chick was signaling. Two red flares!—did that mean the air signal, for an airplane to land, the storm call “proceed no further!”

Or, Don wondered, was Chick himself in danger?

“I can’t go!” he muttered. “Oh, Garry—hurry!”

Garry, revealed by a fresh, and even more vivid stream of heavenly fire, was lifting something.

Don saw him wave, as if urging him to go away.

Then something heavy seemed to come against him, almost taking him off his feet. Instinctively he clutched it, recovering his footing.

“The mail sack!” he gasped.

In the next vivid flash Garry came, hand over hand, along the edge of the wing as the whole ship toppled forward, and the change of angle, freeing its trucks from the mud, enabled the wind to get under the wings with telling effect.

As Don steadied Garry after his drop to the ground, the lightning showed the menace of the toppling airplane.

Backward they leaped, Don with the heavy sack of precious mail.

Just missing them, the wing came down, the fuselage rested for a moment on the supporting earth and then earth, craft and all tumbled and torn by the wind, slipped on into deeper mud beyond the solid earth left just a foot beyond Garry’s toes.

“Let’s get back!” gasped Garry, shaken.

“But the pilot?——” began Don.

“He wasn’t there!”

Don realized, as they turned to retrace the Way, that the pilot could have had time, scant but sufficient, to leap clear in a back-pack ’chute and that it would be impossible for them to comb the marsh for him in the rapidly coming blackness, wind and rain.

As rapidly as they could, finally breaking into a run when they got clear of the most dangerous and slippery end of the promontory, Don and Garry raced toward the beckoning flares.

Carrying the mail pouch, impeded by it as it caught on the restraining grasses, Don followed Garry. Garry, his eyes straining, tried to detect the figure of Chick by their guiding light, but he saw no figure!

As they came into the clear space near the boathouse, with wind whipping the first flecks of rain into their faces to add its cold warning to the sting of salt spray torn from the growing crests of waves, Don and Garry paused, almost stunned.

The last ruddy glow of the flares, and the white fires almost constantly leaping across the zenith, showed them two forms emerging from the door of the hovel, toward the planks that led across the marsh to solid ground.

They were struggling. They were locked together. One was large, the other small and slight.

“Chick!” yelled Don, putting speed to his flying feet.

The flares died. In a glare of light the larger figure broke free from the smaller as they came to the boarding.

The lightning died out, leaving the sky a black, thunder-echoing void. The earth beneath was cloaked in the pall. With blinded eyes Don stopped, fearing to crash into Garry just ahead of him.

They were too far away to see, in that masking blackness, what had happened.

The last light had shown the smaller figure reeling backward, on the edge of the planks, it seemed.

There was nothing to do! To run forward might mean being precipitated into the marshy channels.

They waited for the next flash.

With the perversity of storms, the lightning seemed exhausted for a long, mind-torturing moment. When next it flared up, two anxious hearts seemed to drop like leaden weights from two tight throats where they had striven to constrict the breath.

Bare and silent lay the narrow footway across the marsh.

Dark and sinister the water moiled in the channels beneath it.

Thick and brooding, the heavy grass bent and seemed to whisper mockingly in the wind.

“Garry!—where did Chick go?”

“Don—I don’t know! I can’t see!”

They ran forward while the light lasted.

The next flashes gave them light to get to the edge of the footway over the marsh. They stared toward the grass, the water, the bare and unrevealing planks.

Chick was not visible. Neither was his adversary.

Beyond the end of the planks the grass began again. Don dropped the mail pouch: Garry, his kit forgotten, deserted far behind them in the eel grass at the promontory end, ran across the planks. Into the hovel Don turned.

On the narrow, twisting path beyond the planks Garry searched, unable to see far because the grass stood so high.

In the hut, with wind roaring around it, Don strained his eyes to gain some truth from the upset table, the overturned lantern, the evidences of strife and of struggle that the lightning showed as its fire came leaping again through the doorway.

Quickly Garry retraced his steps to be met on the planking by Don.

“There has been a fight!” cried Don. “Did you find anybody—see anything?”

“No!” answered Don, “but—listen!”

As the thunder reverberated and echoed, followed by a deep silence, pounding feet came along the path they had recently used, from the promontory. They turned, staring into the South, the light coming at their backs from the sky fires.

A man in a pilot’s helmet and jacket, corduroy trousers and high boots, running in a staggering, uneven course, with an arm swinging limp at his side, hailed them.

“Help!——”

The figure stopped, wavering, and crumpled on the earth.

Swiftly Don and Garry ran to the man who lay prone on the sod.

“Oh!” he moaned, and then, recovering slightly, he gasped, “can you get me to—doctor?—hurt—inside!”

“It’s the mail ’plane pilot!” cried Don.

He saw his duty, and there was scant time in which to do it.

The first winged cohorts of the storm clouds had broken to shreds overhead. Its first fury was expended. From the North came the gathering furies of its second, and more terrible onslaught.

If Don could get that Dragonfly into the air and climb out of the turbulent area, he could get the pilot to some medical man; at the same time he might carry on that mail!—and send searchers to find Chick.

Much depended on the safe delivery of the pouch Garry had recovered. It was the first of what might be a successful series of ship-to-shore mail flights, from vast ocean greyhounds, in swift airplanes. Its successful delivery meant a great future for Don’s uncle who had started the idea with the inception of his new airport.

“Yes!” Don cried, bidding Garry help him to lift the pilot to his feet.

To get that tethered airplane, the Dragonfly, started, warmed up and aloft, carrying pilot and mail, was his immediate concern.

Ably Garry aided him.

Before the fury of the storm broke again, their storm-tossed wings cut the air, climbing swiftly through the darkness that seemed breathlessly waiting, still ominous, waiting—while Don flew his best.

Then, from the North, the storm furies leaped.