At Usanga's order one of the blacks lifted her from the ground and
carried her to the machine, and after Usanga had clambered aboard,
they lifted her up and he reached down and drew her into the fuselage
where he removed the thongs from her wrists and strapped her into
her seat and then took his own directly ahead of her.
The girl turned her eyes toward the Englishman. She was very pale
but her lips smiled bravely.
"Good-bye!" she cried.
"Good-bye, and God bless you!" he called back--his voice the least
bit husky--and then: "The thing I wanted to say-may I say it now,
we are so very near the end?"
Her lips moved but whether they voiced consent or refusal he did
not know, for the words were drowned in the whir of the propeller.
The black had learned his lesson sufficiently well so that the
motor was started without bungling and the machine was soon under
way across the meadowland. A groan escaped the lips of the distracted
Englishman as he watched the woman he loved being carried to almost
certain death. He saw the plane tilt and the machine rise from
the ground. It was a good take-off--as good as Lieutenant Harold
Percy Smith-Oldwick could make himself but he realized that it was
only so by chance. At any instant the machine might plunge to earth
and even if, by some miracle of chance, the black could succeed
in rising above the tree tops and make a successful flight, there
was not one chance in one hundred thousand that he could ever land
again without killing his fair captive and himself.
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