Everything was sweet as a nut, and the same procedure was gone through with the other motor. My ship was r’arin’ to go, and so was Fernald’s. The field guard pulled the blocks and tossed them into the rear cockpit, and I turned my ship on a dime by using only the left-hand motor, which pulled the ship around to the right. Then followed Fernald’s huge Martin, like a house on wheels, up the field for the take-off. * * * * * The field lay practically east and west, and the western edge went right to the edge of the river. The wind was from the west. There was a screen of trees and undergrowth between the edge and the Ohio, the tops of the trees some fifteen feet above the level of the field. The growth was on the banks of the river, which sloped down from the field to the water. As I was turning for the take-off Les, with Bailey beside him, gave his ship the guns. It roared away across the field, and in a moment his steady pressure on the wheel had the tail up. I waited, in order to give the air, which would be badly scrambled by the wash of two propellers, a chance to clear a bit. I set my goggles, jazzed each motor a bit, and shoved the two throttles all the way on just as Les left the ground. In a Martin there is no obstruction to your view, the motors being to each side of you. It took all my strength, pushing against the wheel, to get the tail up. As my big bomber picked up speed Les was circling over the river. Then two things happened simultaneously. I heard a wild mixture of yells, screams and shrieks from the cars drawn up on the edges of the field at the same moment that the tail of my ship hit the ground again with a terrific crunch and the wheel under my hands suddenly became free, as easily movable as if it was attached to nothing whatever. I took a split-second to look up, and saw Fernald’s Martin, in a half-spin, drop below the edge of the trees. The next second a reversed Niagara of water rose above the foliage. My brain, none too hardy an instrument at best, was literally as numb as a piece of sausage. But I could not think of Les then. My elevators were no more--that was why the wheel had become free in my hand and the tail back on the ground. I was within a hundred feet of the trees, traveling at more than fifty miles an hour, with no chance of taking off. In a flash my hand dropped to the throttles. By cutting one, the other motor would drag the ship around, probably wrecking a wing, but saving me. Even as I did so, I knew I could not do it. For those ---- cars had lined each edge of the field, and my ship would probably plow through them, killing every fool spectator in the bunch.