Air pilots -- Juvenile fiction; Mystery and detective stories; Reporters and reporting -- Juvenile fiction
Before he knew it he was over Sunbury. He noticed that the haze was
increasing rapidly. He thought it might be fog rolling up from the
Susquehanna. Soon he was at the Woodward Pass. There was the lofty
beacon on the brow of Winkelblech Mountain. Jimmy was high above it. Now
he was past the mountain and soaring over Penn’s Valley. A very few
minutes would put him into Bellefonte. He glanced at his clock. He had
made amazingly good time. He was going to reach Bellefonte in close to
two and a half hours after all.
Now he was passing Millheim, with its blazing beacon on the crest of
Nittany Mountain. The mist was increasing. It bade fair to be bad. But
it could not gather quick enough to interfere with him. In no time he
would be in Bellefonte. But suddenly his struts and wires began to hum
and vibrate. The vibration rapidly grew worse. The humming grew into a
screech. Jimmy’s blood began to run cold. His plane was icing up. The
thing most feared by airmen was happening to him. Along the edges of his
wings, he knew, ice was forming, as the mist froze fast to the fabric.
If it continued to form, it would destroy the shape of his wings. They
would lose their lifting power. Then nothing under heaven could keep him
aloft.
And his wings _were_ icing up rapidly. He could tell that from the
feeling of the plane beneath him. It no longer slid through the air with
its smooth, hawk-like passage. Its flight was becoming uncertain. It
trembled and shook. The ship responded but slowly to his control.
Desperately he strove to climb. If he could reach either a colder or a
warmer stratum of air, the ice would melt. He dared not descend, for
beneath him were these terrible mountains. He found it impossible to
climb. The ship had utterly lost its power to do so. Yet Jimmy fought
with all his ability to force the craft upward. He tried every trick he
had ever heard of, to lift the plane higher. He could not gain an inch.
On the other hand, Jimmy knew full well that he was coming down. His
altimeter showed that he was losing altitude steadily. He had been
flying at 5,000 feet elevation. Already he was down to 4,500 feet. The
mountain beneath him towered up to 2,000 feet. If only he could make the
next few miles, and get over the high crests near Bellefonte, he would
be all right. The landing field was at an elevation of only 1,200 feet.
He believed he could glide down into it in safety.
But suddenly his plane began to spin. It was absolutely out of control.
Frantically Jimmy kicked at his rudder, shifted his ailerons, tried
every trick he knew of to get the ship out of the spin. He could do
absolutely nothing with it. The plane was beyond all control.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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