Each of two airplanes was near enough to be, conceivably, the machine which controlled me. On my right, a large, lumbering biplane accompanied me at a distance of a thousand feet. It had the contour of a machine of the Ohio air express; and I took it for a day freighter which had left Chicago at dawn. On my left, and a little higher, flew a monoplane of the passenger type and of a size to be a three-seater.
I did not identify its contours; it was of an individual type; and as it kept pace with me—or I was made to keep pace with it—this soon betrayed it as the plane which piloted me.
Other airplanes approached, westbound, and passed at various distances and altitudes. I was up five thousand feet and flying evenly enough. I felt no relaxing of the radio control; on the contrary, I felt its stiffness and rigidity. With quick, sudden shifts of rudder or ailerons, my course was corrected and I was kept five hundred feet in front of and slightly below Bane.
It was impossible visually to recognize him in the three-seater; I could get, now and then, only a glimpse of three heads; but I felt Bane's abrupt, decisive hands in the piloting manœuvers which reached me through the radio. The style was the same which I had witnessed in the flight of the radio-controlled monoplane which had borne the effigy.
Of the three heads in the monoplane which drove me, I imagined that the middle was feminine; but I could not see it. I had the word of my pilot, who had leaped, that Miss Lacey had gone ahead with Mr. Bane; and I believed it. He would have her with him; and he had gone ahead but here, over the farm land where my pilot had leaped, Bane had awaited me.
I felt him, I say, take me firmly in hand; now I felt him begin to amuse himself with me, skimming me altogether too close to a single-seater biplane piloted by some amateur, evidently, who was up for practice in the quiet air of dawn.
I almost sent the fellow into a tail spin; and I came through, sweating cold from sitting strapped in my seat, helpless to touch a control. A big cabin machine appeared and Bane either intentionally ignored it or noticed it too late to make me graze it. I passed it with a space of five hundred feet between us and found myself climbing.
From the east and fifteen hundred feet higher flew a mail plane. I knew the contour and I thought of the mail-flyer who had been discussed on the terrace. I was climbing to reach the level of this mail machine and, also, was pointed at it.
The three seater, which guided me, also climbed; for the proper position for control was slightly above me and behind. Playing with me, was he? I wondered; and was his sense of sport to remain satisfied with sending me skimming past another machine? Or would he send me into this one, deliberately?
That depended, I thought, upon whether one of the heads in that three-seater was feminine, whether she was aboard. If she was, probably he would continue merely to play with me; probably I would not be deliberately driven into another plane. He would continue to show her how close he could skim me by and not strike.
Sweating in my palms and on the soles of my feet, I passed the mail-plane with the mail pilot turned and staring at me. He thought me a show-off, I suppose, flying at him and holding my hands behind my back as I went by.
But I went by. So she was aboard the three-seater; and after this, either she succeeded in preventing more exhibitions of this sort or it ceased to amuse him. He sent me far off to the side, recalled me, crossing me in front of him, tipped me, "banked" me and turned me over.
I flew upside down, the straps over my shoulders holding me in. He righted me. A few minutes later, he did the worst of all. He ceased to play with me; he ceased to pilot me; he let his hold on me lapse. The stiffness and the rigidity of his grasp was gone; the quick, sudden shifts stopped. I was flying by grace of engine power and inherent stability.
I squirmed in my straps as I felt it. I was helpless, seven thousand feet up, with my throttle full open, flying full speed, wild and unpiloted—with the controls four feet in front of me which I could not touch. I felt myself amuck, a crazy missile in the sky. I shot up, slanting to the left, tipped and started to dive. With the engine on full it frightfully increased the pull of gravity; I zoomed with the ground rushing up to me—when the radio caught me again.
It leveled me off, straightened me and sent me ahead of the three-seater once more; and held me there, as on a leash, for an hour. We were over Ohio, with Lake Erie lying on the left, when I was sent circling and the three-seater passed me and flew on far ahead.
Still circling, I watched it go eastward and diminish to a speck. It was inconceivable that it still piloted me; yet I was piloted, for I was circling, level and steady; but the character of the control had changed. Another pilot, not so abrupt and positive, held me in his hand. He was on the ground, I realized; for no other airplane was in sight until one rose with two men aboard.
They flew above me, while the ground pilot kept me level and steady. The extra man in the new plane came aboard and brought me down to an unmarked meadow next to what appeared to be an ordinary farmhouse. Neither the pilot nor the two mechanics who inspected my machine furnished me any account of Bane or of Cawder. It was a stop for fuel, they told me; and immediately the pilot took me on.
He remained at the controls, not leaping and returning me to radio guidance, after we were again in the air; he brought me over the mountains and to the lake in the hold in the hills.
Having wheels, not pontoons, we landed on the green lawn to the east of the water where an empty three-seater stood, its engine giving off heat vapors.
The drawn-up doors of hangars displayed a dozen single-seaters, two-seaters, three and four, at which mechanics tinkered and tuned. Donley directed some of them; and I saw the red head of Kinvarra bent in an intent inspection.
A blue seaplane, of the pattern of the effigy's, taxi-ed on the lake and the beach clattered, was silent, and clattered again with a motor-testing. The air of final preparations pervaded the place—practical, careful preparations.