This maneuver sent Bill’s antagonist sprawling onto the wooden yoke to which both wheels were attached, forcing it forward as far as it would go. The gangster’s head smashed into the instrument board and he lay inert. Himself thrown forward by the amphibian’s dive, Bill caught at the seat to save his own head. The man’s unconscious body prevented any manipulation of elevators or ailerons. The plane was beyond his control, and racing earthward with wide open throttle at a hair-raising rate of speed. He must save himself if he could: within a second or so the big aircraft would be but a twisted mass of burning wood and metal flaming in the swamp below. Luckily, the pilot’s cockpit had no roof. Bill dragged himself on to the back of his seat, which, now due to the plane’s almost vertical position, had become a small, horizontal platform. With a hand on the pull ring of his parachute pack, he dived head first over the cockpit’s cowl into the open ether.