Chapter I: Am Dead

_This is the testament of Jimmy Collins, the test pilot._

_It is, as he himself phrased it, "The word of my life and my death. The dream word that breathed into my nostrils the breath of life and destroyed me too."_

_The body of Jimmy Collins was found on Friday in Pinelawn Cemetery, near Farmingdale, L. I., beneath the wreckage of the Grumman ship he had tested for the navy. That body was broken, mangled, twisted, in a 10,000-foot crash._

_His testament, the utterance of a poet who flew, first in search of beauty, then in search of bread, is bravely, lyrically alive, straight and whole, as was the spirit of the man who wrote it._

_He wrote it--laughingly, he said; grimly, we believe--nine months ago. This is how it happened:_

_In October Collins went to Buffalo to test a new Curtiss bomber-fighter for the navy. Before he left he took dinner with his old friend Archer Winsten, who conducts the In the Wake of the News column for the_ Post. _Winsten wrote a column about Collins and his spectacular job, begged the flyer to do a guest column for him on his return, telling of the Buffalo feat._

_What happened after that is best told in Collins's own words._

_He wrote to his sister, out West: "I got to thinking it over and thought maybe I wouldn't come back because it was a dangerous job, and then poor Archer would be out of a column.... So I playfully wrote one for him in case I did get bumped off. Thoughtful of me, don't you think?... I never got bumped off. Too bad, too, because it would have been a scoop for Arch...."_

_Last Friday's job was to have been Jimmy's last as a test pilot. He took it because he needed the money, for his wife and children. Soon he was to have started on a writer's career._

_Jimmy's writing career ends today with his testament. He prefaced it with the following:_

_"The next words you read will be those of James H. Collins, and not 'as told to,' although you might say ghost-written."_