CHAPTER XIII
VISION
Hal Dane was above the trimotor now, and was still sending out hisdesperate aerial telegraph call, "T-t-t-tat tat-t-tatt-tat--danger--keep flying--danger!"
He had raced and choked and pounded his engine till smoke fumesdischarged gassily from it. The next sputter might stall a filthy motorto a "conk" in mid-air, might back-fire flame into the carburetor. Yetthe message must still go on. Three lives depended on that onehairbreadth chance.
"Danger--keep flying!"
But the trimotor was going down. It swooped to five hundred--threehundred--began to flatten at two hundred feet for the last lap of thedown glide.
"Danger! Danger! Danger!" shrieked the tortured staccato of the higherplane. "Danger! Danger! Keep flying!"
Even as the great plane below swooped to strike earth, its pilot liftedwings in a mighty upward dart. Higher and higher he rose. Behind himtrailed his own call in aerial telegraphy. "Danger--where--what?" roaredthe staccato bellow of the trimotor.
In their brief code, Hal Dane tapped back the answer on his engine, andurged return flight to the school aviation field before attempting thelanding.
As Raynor and Hal circled near, they could see McGinnis turn the controlover to Colonel Wiljohn. Then the boy climbed out over the side of theplane and swung head downward to see if he could reach the broken gearand perhaps lash it back into place.
A hopeless task, it appeared, for Fuz McGinnis slowly dragged himselfback into the cockpit. Soon the plane circled and headed back for theRand-Elwin grounds.
All that wild race to Clanton had taken a bare fifteen minutes. Anotherquarter of an hour saw them back above the home field.
Raynor and Hal made their descent in record time, leaped from the planeand raced for the edge of the field. Men jostled together to give thesetwo room. Like the rest of the waiting throng they stood, heads back,eyes glued to the crippled sky craft.
"She's coming--now!" It was a whisper, a prayer that came from everyheart and lip in the crowd.
The plane was coming down in wide, slow circles.
"Atta boy, you're bringing her in beautifully--yet every odd's againstyou!" gritted Raynor through set teeth.
"But he's got a chance, one chance," muttered Hal, gripping Rex Raynor'sarm and pointing excitedly. "If he keeps to the balance he's got--runson that one wheel to lose momentum, it can--"
It could.
Fuz McGinnis held his plane to angle of balance, even as he sped half ahundred feet on the one wheel after he struck ground. Then came atearing, splintering crash as the plane shot sideways, dragging the downwing into mangled wreckage. Even so, the greatest danger mark had beenpassed. That one-wheel run had spent the worst of the dread momentum.
Guards held the frantic crowd back while experienced hands tore at thewreckage, lifted out the occupants. The three of them were dazed,bruised, cut about hands and face from flying pieces of wood and fabric.But the miracle of it--they were alive, practically unhurt.
Fuz McGinnis stood for a long minute leaning weakly against the tiltedmass of wing debris. His face held the look of one who has been on a farjourney and is not quite sure he is really on home land once again. Ashe came out of his daze, he leaned over and gripped Hal Dane in a shakygrasp.
"B-boy," he said, "if you hadn't that message us to got--no, no, gotthat message to us, I mean, we'd have been--"
"We'd have been dead," broke in Colonel Wiljohn. "But you brought theword, in a blasted clever way. You turned some sort of tomfoolery intolifesaving. We owe our lives to you both. I--I--we thank you." Reachingdown, Colonel Wiljohn swept his grandson into his arms, pressed thechild against his face. Then he set the little fellow down and gravelyinstructed him to give a handshake of thanks to each of the youngfellows.
The crowd would be denied no longer. It broke through the guards, surgedover to the little group beside the wreck. Women laughed and sobbed inrelief as they saw the child standing unhurt, clinging to hisgrandfather's hand. Men laughed huskily and tried to hide emotion inheavy handclasps. They wanted the whole story,--how had McGinnis broughther down without a worse wreck, where had Raynor and young Dane foundthem, got the warning across to them?
It was full thirty minutes before the crowd could be dispersed sowreckers could haul off the disabled plane, and so the aviators in thisthrilling episode could slip away to some place of quiet and rest.
That night Hal Dane and Fuz McGinnis attended their first banquet. Itwas not altogether an unmixed pleasure--this the first formal festivalin the whole of their work-filled young lives. The fact that they wereseated rather high was not altogether comforting to their timidity,either. This was the celebration that had been planned weeks ahead oftime and was staged to do honor to the school's guest, Colonel Wiljohn.Then here at the eleventh hour, so to speak, and at the Colonel'sespecial request, this couple of young aviators had been dragged in tosit next to him.
It was comforting to feel the Colonel's kindly presence but even thatdid not compensate entirely for the unmitigated terror of a startlingarray of forks with varying uses staring balefully up at one from theheavy linen of a banquet cloth. One felt conspicuous in such a dazzle oflights, in such a gathering of notables.
"I'm not much up on banquets," hoarsely whispered Hal under cover of aspeech by one of the notables. "Y-you don't reckon anybody'll expect usto say anything?"
"Gosh, no!" from Fuz. "Anybody could look at us and know we couldn'ttalk. But something else is bothering me--"
"Bothering me, too," mumbled Hal, and subsided glumly beside a plate ofbroiled chicken, green peas and mushrooms in ramekins, potatoes in somenewfangled way, a spiced jelly.
Colonel Bob Wiljohn responded to a speech of welcome. Other speechesfollowed.
Then Hal Dane and Fuz McGinnis became redly aware that Mr. Rand,standing very erect beside the table, was talking in a serious voice andmentioning their names considerably.
"The blow's going to fall now," Hal's lips silently sent a message tohis chum.
"We have here an extraordinary case." Mr. Rand's voice was stern. "Itconcerns two of our most brilliant pupils in aviation--and on the eve oftheir graduation. Although under a sentence of suspended judgmentalready, they have now risked locking the doors of graduation onthemselves forever by flagrant disobedience of strict orders--"
"I protest--" Colonel Wiljohn was on his feet, gray eyes flashing. "Yourwords give the wrong impression. You mean two boys entered a risk tosave a valuable plane if possible, to save human lives--"
"Wait, wait! And I accept your protest, Colonel." Mr. Rand's eyes alsoheld a flash, a high enthusiasm, his stern mouth relaxed into a smile."I want to state further that we, the board of officers of thisinstitution, had already decided--against all past precedent andrules--to ignore said flagrant act of disobedience, and to graduatethese two young men--with honors!"
Waves of hand-clapping and cheers broke over a couple of dazed youngaviators.
"So the--" Fuz muttered.
"The 'Benzine Board' didn't get us after all," finished Hal.
That very night Colonel Wiljohn had a long talk with the boys andoffered them work. He could use them well. They had both displayed anuncanny aptitude for flying, and he needed plane demonstrators. Hal'sinstructors, Raynor and Major Weston, had told him enough about theboy's unusual grasp of engine mechanics to arouse his interest. Thiskeen, successful business man got up and walked the floor in hisexcitement as he and Hal delved further into the boy's future-lookingideas for invention in harnessing piston power for landing planes gentlyand with a lessening of landing dangers. His factories, he said, werewilling to pay well for brains, needed young fellows with vision, bothin the flying and in the invention departments. Would they considercoming with him?
Would they?
Young McGinnis quite emphatically mixed his words hind-part-before inthe fervor of assuring Colonel Wiljohn of his willingness to go.
For the space
of a minute Hal Dane sat perfectly still, eyes wide open,but in them the look of a man in a dream. He was in a dream; this wasthe beginning of visions about to come true. It couldn't be real. He'dwake up--
"I'm counting on you." Colonel Wiljohn's strong, friendly hand graspedhis shoulder.
"I--yes, sir--I'll be on hand," Hal finally got out.
Leaving the Rand-Elwin Flying School seemed to Hal like turning over oneof the busiest, happiest pages of his life. He parted from his splendid,true friends here with real regret. Yet, like all youth, he was eager toturn the next page of life.
Before he entered upon his new work, there was time for a brief visitwith his home folks. He found the old house still uprearing itsmakeshift patchwork roof among the tree tops. Within, though, the moneythat he'd managed to save and send home in carnival days had wroughtsome comfortable changes. There were rugs, dainty curtains, a piece ortwo of new furniture. He found his mother and Uncle Tel not so grounddown with toil these days. In his mind, Hal was already looking forward.to other changes--a roof, and a coat of creamy white paint for thehouse, a little car so the folks could get around--just wait till hebegan making some real money!
* * * * *
For Hal Dane, life at the Wiljohn Works promised to be the greatestthrill he had ever known. Up till now he had not realized the vastextent, both in space and operations, of a modern aviation factory. Itwas not one factory, but many. There was a bewildering variety to theoutput.
Hal had thought the Works concentrated on some special type of plane.Instead, he found them manufacturing about everything from a small, neatsky boat for private use up to giant craft for freight and passengerairliners. There were air boats with wings that folded up so one couldtrundle them into the family garage instead of into a hangar.
Over in the invention department tests of all kinds were beingcontinually conducted. With his keen gray eyes looking well to thefuture, Colonel Wiljohn was willing to try out in his laboratoriesthings which to more conservative men seemed mere schemes andaddle-pated ideas. If a scheme failed in the testing, it was justanother visionary mechanism to be set aside. If one idea out of ten, outof a hundred even, proved to have worth, aviation had made a forwardstep!
In the parachute department strange weaves of silk were being tested forqualities and purposes that silk makers of fifty years ago never dreamedwould ever be demanded of their products. According to laboratorydecision, the habutai silk in present use for parachutes would soon bedisplaced by a new weave, the basket-mesh type. And why? Because thebasket-weave oscillated less than the old habutai type, it absorbedshock better, it lowered more slowly and allowed for better landings.Silk that once fulfilled its purpose if it had a sheen and gloss tocatch milady's eye! And now it was demanded that it have a strength tolower man ten thousand feet through the air without a jostle and landhim on earth without a bruise!
In the engine room, motors were being tried out for streamlines andcooling systems, for weight reduction and elimination of fire hazards,for burning new high-powered fuel oils.
Where the prevailing wing material had formerly been wood and fabric,tests were now being made to prove the worth of all-metal construction.For new purposes the old-time metallic standbys were found unusable.Light metals crystallized and snapped into brittle pieces. The oldstrong metals possessed of endurance were too heavy for aircraft. A newmetal, light as aluminum and strong as steel, must be produced.
And so the experimenting and testing went on.
As Hal Dane became familiar with some of the scientific revolution andevolution going on at the huge Wiljohn Works, he caught again somethingof the high splendid vision of following the river of the wind on agreat exploration. If ever he were to go as sky viking, here in thisvast plant were being riveted and welded aircraft suitable to bear himon that journey.