in the air. “Yours first, Keen,” he called as the coin came down on his palm.

It was tails. Carmichael’s flip brought heads and with the next turn the pilot lost too. Hal lost no time in ripping the chute from him and adjusting it on Carmichael.

“Good luck to you, fellow,” he said. “I’ll try to find a spot as near here as possible. Have you got our position.”

Carmichael nodded gravely. Rodriguez uttered a little squeal, the color went from his face and in a second the plane began to wobble. Hal pulled him from behind the wheel and himself righted the ship.

“I’ll keep hold of her now,” he assured Carmichael who stood anxiously in the low doorway of the cockpit. “Our brave Ace isn’t fit to steer a baby carriage. He hasn’t morale enough to keep himself going, much less a ship. All right, now, I’m giving you enough altitude to let you clear us nicely. Can’t keep it up more than a couple of minutes though. Listen to her missing! Bail out now, Rene,” he added, using the latter’s Christian name unconsciously. “See you later.”

“Sooner than that, Hal,” Carmichael smiled wistfully. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Doggone right I will! Scoot now!”

Hal knew he was going, knew he was gone. There was that about Carmichael, he felt, that one immediately missed—that effulgent something which seemed to radiate from his slim person. Now that light had gone with him and there was no sound but the unsteady throb of the motor. Rodriguez was huddled over in the corner of the cockpit shivering, with his eyes fixed fearfully over the illimitable roof of the jungle.

Hal, however, had ceased to consider his presence at all. Moreover, there wasn’t time. Every precious second he used in circling lower and lower over the glistening green jungle and trying to remember word for word the valuable advice that the famous brothers Bellair had given him as to what could be done in a pinch.

He had cut down a thousand feet, then two thousand, and then he could pick out the colorful birds flying from tree to tree. A few hundred feet more and he could see them quite plainly. After that he dared to let her dive a little and coming out on an even keel he saw something between the dense foliage that made his heart thump.

It was a clearing.

CHAPTER X SAFETY?

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