Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AIR ADVENTURER 95 around the cords that bound his wrists. Then, straining the muscles of his wiry fingers mightily, he succeeded in clamp- ing the plier handles tightly shut between his palms. The cords snapped apart. He was free! A grin tinged his lips as he chafed his bruised wrists. Both Scarface and his companion were unaware of his escape. They were intent on the flight of the plane, still soaring for altitude. Cautiously Skip searched among the four mail bags holding the fortune in currency. Unerringly, as though by prearrangement, he picked out one sack and broke the seal. Apparently un- aware that he was rifling a United States’ mail bag he slid in his oon arm to the elbow. When it reappeared his hand was clutching a squat automatic. And he was grinning queerly at something he saw in the bag. Deftly now, Skip cut the cords that bound his ankles. His eyes hard and frosty, he straightened to his knees, gun in hand, confident, ready for the show- down. “Stick ‘em up!” he barked. “You with the slashed face, keep one hand on the stick and watch your flying. I’m shooting for keeps at the first sign of a double-cross !”’ With one accord Scarface and his accomplice whirled in their seats and stared unbelievingly at the menacing figure behind them. . Then all hell broke loose in a dozen places. SKIP FIRED wildly and missed as the cabin floor bucked upward. He was hurled forward by Scarface’s sudden nose dive. Frantically clawing for a handhold Skip crashed head-on into the bulky figure of Fisheyes, half risen in his seat. Hampered by his ’chute pack, Fisheyes was tugging madly at his gun pocket, murder in his flat eyes. Scar- face pulled the throttle wide open in a screaming power dive. The terrific impact of his plunge into Fisheyes sent Skip’s gun slithering away in the steeply tilted interior of the plummeting monoplane. Fisheyes’ gun jerked free and Skip lunged for his gun hand, fighting desperately to turn the flame-belching weapon away. Hot flame stabbed at his side and he felt the warm trickle of blood plastering his shirt to his body. Searface screamed vile curses as he sought to break the battling pair apart by wild gyrations of the monoplane. One instant of freedom and a could finish Skip. The monoplane hurtled into a loop. Immelmann turn followed, barrel rolls, chandelles, stalls, slips, falling leafs, in a wild jamboree of aerobatics. Locked in a deadly embrace, Skip clung tightly to his opponent’s gun hand, taking a fearful battering from the other fist. The erratic, insane maneu- vers of the monoplane smashed him from pillar to post, but he clung tena- ciously to Fisheyes’ gun hand. So wrapped up in their murderous feud were the two that at first they did not hear the shrill screams of the pilot. “Fire! Fire! Break, you fools!” Skip and Fisheyes catapulted apart. Gasping, spitting blood, Skip grasped the situation at a glance. The exterior of the plane was sheathed in flames ! Scarface’s wild aérobatics had taxed the engine. Flame was licking from the radial motor in long tongues that curled hungrily past the windows of the cabin. Momentarily paralyzed by this new disaster Skip forgot his adversary. Fisheyes seized his opportunity. Murderously he struck with his clubbed gun. The blow caught Skip on the side of the neck and he dropped like a poled steer. “Quick!” snarled Scarface. “Throw those mail sacks out. We've got to Comicbooksicom