Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 55977-h.htm or 55977-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55977/55977-h/55977-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55977/55977-h.zip) [Illustration: “These flowers remind me of a barber shop,” he explained.] FLIGHT An Epic of The Air by IRWIN R. FRANKLYN Adapted from Columbia’S All-Talking Picture by Ralph Graves A Frank R. Capra Production Produced by Harry Cohn Illustrated with Scenes from the Photoplay Grosset & Dunlap Publishers : : New York Copyright, 1929, by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Made in the United States of America TO HAZELE HARMON WITHOUT WHOSE GENEROUS ASSISTANCE THE STORY OF THE BOY WHO RAN BACKWARD WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN FLIGHT CHAPTER I On this particular chilly November afternoon, the famous Yale Bowl was packed to its upmost tier with seething humanity, there for the purpose of witnessing the classic football event of the season, between Old Eli and Harvard. Though the score was nothing to nothing, with only two minutes to play in the last quarter, the Harvard side were jubilant, for Roger Baer, the Yale star and Massachusetts’ only menace, had just injured his ankle and was forced to leave the field. These thousands of men and women, cramped into the great stadium, represented an army of interested, pulsating humanity divided into sides, with each faction placing their faith in the ability of the team for which they had come to root. Whether it was to be Yale or Harvard who would emerge from the game, showered in the glory of victory, was a question of time, but whether or not the men and women, whose eyes were fascinated by the action of the teams in the field, were really alive with interest, could be told by the expressions registered upon their tense faces—the faces of all but one man. Panama Williams had been dragged to the Yale Bowl by two of his buddies from the Marine Aviation Base at San Diego, who were also on a leave of absence in the East. Williams’ busy life had been cramped with so many things that sports had never found a place in his heart. Why he had consented to go to the game, he couldn’t explain, nevertheless he was there, in a box on the Yale side, entirely devoid of interest or enthusiasm. This man, attired in the uniform of the United States Marine Corps, with the emblems of a top sergeant emblazoned upon each sleeve, was a taciturn, hard-boiled individual who had passed through four enlistments in the service of his country’s sea soldiers. With the government’s aviation expansion program came a desire to win new glories as a pilot, so Sergeant Williams, who had served his country in the four corners of the globe, on land and sea, took to the air and again made good.