"Hope they haven't hit my tank," he maundered. "I -- I'll get there
--" But that was all he did say, for unconsciousness was coming fast.
At the same time he sensed somehow that the Fokker -- already well
peppered by his own crowd on that same day -- was listing, sagging, so
that at last he could hardly keep his seat.
"I -- I'm goin' -- goin'," he kept reiterating in his mind. "Goin' -
go'n -- go --" He lapsed into complete unconsciousness, with his last
sentient movement pressing the wheel and controls downward and towards
the left, where he finally half fell, as we have seen before.
Byers and the orderly bore him quickly to the near-by dormitory, where
many of the fliers were temporarily lodged. Senator Walsen and the
girls followed, while some of the mechanics attended to the crippled
Fokker.
In almost no time the surgeon on duty was there with two of the Red
Cross nurses. Though unconscious, Stanley was restless, uneasy,
evidently worrying. He muttered unintelligibly, tried to break forth
more loudly, but for the present was unable to make any meaning clear
to the others.
"What gets me," remarked Byers while watching the deft manipulations of
the surgeon and the nurses, "is how he came here alone and in such a
rig. Why, that Fokker must have been taken from Fritzy! Why didn't he
return in one of our own machines? Where are the others? I tell you,
Senator, there is trouble afoot; I feel it in my bones!"
As may be imagined, both Andra and Avella were much concerned, though
neither would admit it to the other or, for that matter, to any one
else.
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