A Viking of the Sky: A Story of a Boy Who Gained Success in Aeronautics
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CHAPTER XXI
CALL OF THE WINDS
Like one come back to the present from a far journey into eternity, HalDane sat for a space within the gyroscope's cockpit. He hardly heard thetumult that was men battering down the locked door to the tower hangar.Next thing he knew, many hands were lifting him out of the squat machinethat had made its triumphal straight-rise, and its equally triumphantdown-drop.
Fuz McGinnis, red hair on end, eyes blazing with excitement, was thefirst to get to him.
"By Jehoshaphat J-J-Jumping--man, you did it!" Fuz howled incoherently,"but I wouldn't live through another t-t-ten minutes like that--not tobe President, even!"
Then Mr. Rankin, representative of the great Onheim Prize Fund, waspumping his hand up and down, "Congratulations, Hal Dane! The award isbound to be yours. There's not the slightest doubt that yourextraordinary performance has beaten every other safety record set heretoday. Things'll have to be confirmed at headquarters though--will beletting you know."
Once Hal was outside the hangar, the surging crowd pressed close. He wasthe center of a shouting, thrilling excitement. Newspaper men foughttheir way to him. Questions were hurled at him thick and fast.
Could that thing be counted on always to rise straight-up, and to sitback down just like that, behind a wall, or a steeple, or anything? Halrather thought it could, considering the flood test, and now thisshooting up out of a tower.
That being the case, did he realize that this invention was likely torevolutionize the airplane business? Had he caught the vision of whatthe gyroscope could do in the way of taking off and landing on a mereroof top? Had he any plans for the now very possible city-to-be whichwould have roof-top terminals on all its down-town buildings?
Heavens, how these reporter fellows could shoot off questions! Halanswered, "Yes, and yes again, and, well no, he hadn't drawn any plansof future cities--he'd been too busy drawing plans of airplanes--" Andthen Hal ducked for cover.
"Here, Fuz, help me get out of this," he whispered, "there's somewhereelse I've got to be, now--right away!"
So Fuz had slid into the cockpit of his own Wiljohn biplane, warmed upthe motor, and held the machine in readiness behind the long mechanics'hall near the center of the grounds. Ten minutes later, Hal Dane enteredone door of this building, went out by another door, flung a leg overthe cockpit, and was in beside Fuz. In the next moment, he was ridinghigh above the throng, fleeing from fame, on the way to the "somewhereelse"--and that was the Mazarin Hangars on the city outskirts. Here washoused his own plane, his Wind Bird, that he'd not yet seen in all itscompleteness.
He felt light of heart, almost giddy with his sense of freedom. Outthere on the exhibition grounds by his successful demonstration of theWiljohn-Dane gyroscope, he had paid his debt to the man that had mostbefriended him, Colonel Wiljohn.
As they landed out in Mazarin, a man in the Wiljohn uniform, who hadbeen pacing back and forth before one of the low, single-plane hangars,waved to them, then turned about and quickly unlocked the wide, slidingdoors.
Hal sped forward in quick, nervous strides, but paused on the threshold.Now that he was here, he was almost afraid to look. They had completedthe ship in his absence. Suppose mistakes had been made, suppose--
His heart seemed thundering up into his very ears, his face was whiteand strained as he plunged into the semi-darkness of the hangar. Theattendant slipped in behind him, switched on wall lights, overheadlights.
"A-ah!" It was a long, exultant, in-drawn breath of ecstasy. Hal Danestared as though he could never get enough of looking.
The ship--his Wind Bird--she was a beauty! Slender crimson body, silverwing, every inch of her streamlined to split the wind like an arrow!
Slenderly beautiful--but what strength there was here! There was acompactness to this winged creation that only an exact knowledge ofcertain sciences could give. In the peculiar curved shape of the wingsurface lay the solution to one of the deepest hidden secrets of flight.The old flat shape of airplane wings had depended entirely upon airpressure from below for the rise. The peculiar curve to the Wind Bird'ssilvered wing would take full advantage of a thrice greater power--theair's suction pull from above. The material in the wing was in itself amarvel, laminated strata, light in the extreme, yet almost as tough asiron.
Engine streamlined, as well as body! To the unpracticed eye, themodernistic Conqueror-Eisel engine might have seemed absurd in itssmallness and its simplicity. But Hal Dane knew from longexperimentation that in its simplicity lay the fundamental reliabilityof this new type engine. He spun the motor and sat back on his heels tolisten to the smooth gentle hum, music to his mechanic's ear.
Everything was as he had planned it--great fuel tank for thehigh-powered oil he would burn instead of gasoline, another tank to holdthe liquid, life-giving oxygen he would need in the heights. The latestlife-saving devices were installed: radio sending and receivingapparatus, flares, rockets, detachable compass, and a rubber lifeboat inaddition to those appliances that, in an emergency, could convert theplane wing itself into a sea-going raft.
It was Hal's plan that nothing that could be humanly prepared for shouldbe left to mere chance.
The need for such care had already been driven home to him by the tragicfate of two of his gallant rivals in this great flight. Just the daybefore he arrived in San Francisco, young Randall and the veteran, EdWest, in their great trimotor had made their start at winging thePacific for the Valiant Prize. Either overload, or some fault ofmechanism had caused the great plane to fail in a rise above the cliffs.Both pilot and mechanic had crashed to death.
Jammed throttle had set another competitor adrift on the seaedge--where, luckily for him, there were boats a-plenty for the rescue.
With these hazards in mind, Hal kept testing and retesting every part ofhis equipment and mechanism. He bunked that night in the hangar, andwith the morning was again at his work. Terrific coastal rains set in.But snug within the closed cockpit of the Wind Bird, Hal joyouslychallenged the downpour.
At the first flight test, the silver and crimson ship rode the rainclouds with a thrilling swiftness. For the second flight, loaded withall the weight that an ocean flyer needs must bear, the Wind Birdlabored somewhat in the rise, found her speed more slowly. That initialslowness was a thing that had to be borne with. Compensation would comein the continuous quickening of speed as each hour of flight burned upits quota of fuel, and, degree by degree, lifted the weight.
For two days of rain, Hal continued his tests. In between periods ofwork he flung himself down to sleep like a log, letting nature repairthe nerve strain of that long nightmare of flood rescue work.
Sleep was about his only weapon, too, for dodging newspaper men.Reporters were fine, friendly fellows, all right,--but, well, Hal didn'twant to talk. What he wanted was action, to be off.
All his life seemed to have been leading up to this one event--histake-off for his viking flight on the winds of the ocean. And here wasthe take-off held up by rainstorm, an endless one it appeared.
Along the Pacific coast, five other flyers were ready too, awaitingweather conditions for the great journey.
Storm and fog kept Hal Dane on edge for another twelve hours. Then hedecided to wait no longer.
Why couldn't one take-off in a rainstorm? No worse than running intorainstorms out over the waters! On such a journey a flyer had to faceall kinds of weather anyway.