I have some questions to ask you.

Others can handle the guns, but you have special knowledge of great importance to me.

And first, as an expert ace, what are our chances of making that shore, sir, now probably five miles off?
In a crisis, I always want to ask an expert's opinion." Leclair peered from under knit brows at the altimeter needle and the inclinometer.

He leaned from the pilot-house window and looked down at the waves, now hardly a hundred feet below, their foaming hiss quite audible.

From those waves, red light reflected as the sun sank, illuminated the Frenchman's lean, brown features and flung up wavering patches of illumination against the pilot-house ceiling of burnished metal, through the tilted windows that sheerly overhung the water.
"_Eh bien_--" murmured Leclair, noncommittally.
"Well, can we make it, sir ?" The ace inspected the vacuum-gauges, the helicopter tachometers, and shrugged his shoulders.
"'_Fais tout, toi-meme, et Dieu t'aidera_,'" he quoted the cynical old French proverb.