“The second,” went on Bob, “happened in 1927, just about a year before Lindy flew the Atlantic. He took a new type of plane up to test her. He put her through all the stunts that he could think of, and she stood them all right. It seemed as though she was going to come through the test O.K., when Lindy put her into a tail spin. They spiraled down for a while, and Lindy tried to pull her out of it. She wouldn’t respond and went completely out of control. Lindy tugged and yanked at the controls, but he couldn’t get that bus to go into a dive. He did his best to save the ship, but it was no use. He didn’t give up until they were about 300 feet from the ground, which is a mighty short distance to make a jump, if you ask me. But Lindy made it, and landed in somebody’s back yard, the wind knocked out of him, but otherwise all right. That was the second.” “And the third?” asked Hal. “We’re getting ahead of the story. In fact, we’re ahead of the story already. Before he made his second jump, Lindy had joined the Missouri National Guard, and was promoted to a Captaincy in the Reserve and Flight Commander of the 110th Observation Squadron. That’s how he got to be a Captain, you know how he got to be a Colonel. “Then Lindy joined the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, at St. Louis. While he was with them, he helped map out the first mail route from St. Louis to Chicago, and was the first pilot to carry mail along this route. Slim had a habit of starting things off. He was the first to do a lot of things. No sitting back and waiting for others to start things. It was first or nothing for him. Maybe it was his Viking ancestors, I don’t know. “It was while he was flying this route that Lindy had his third initiation into the Caterpillars. He took off one September afternoon from Lambert Field, in St. Louis, on his way to Maywood. Just outside of Peoria a fog rolled in, so thick you could cut it with a knife, Lindy could climb up over it for flying, but he couldn’t land blind. He dropped a flare, but it only lit up a cloud bank. He saw lights, then, through the fog, and knew that he was around Maywood, but couldn’t get the exact location of the field. He’d circled around for two hours, when his engine sputtered and died. The tank was dry. Lindy quickly turned on the reserve gravity tank. There was twenty minutes of flying in that tank, and Lindy had to think fast.