CHAPTER XX
PRISONED WINGS
In the days that followed, Hal Dane plugged steadily on with his shareof the rescue program, until at last the crest of the flood had passedand the waters began to recede.
After a late supper each night, he paid his regular visit to the fieldhospital to see how the Wiljohns, mother and child, were getting on.
Tonight, as he tapped on the board and canvas door, the nurse steppedout.
"Yes, the change for the better has come," she said, "for a while wethought it was a matter of hours before life would go. Both hadmarvelous reserve strength though, and they've rallied surprisingly--areout of danger now. But," and the nurse smiled, "it'll be a good whilebefore they'll be ready for another such speed trip as you gave them.That was a wonderful rescue you made, Mr. Dane."
Hal squirmed uncomfortably. "Just came in the day's work. Anybody'd havedone it--"
"Nonsense!" A heavy voice boomed in. "Nonsense, Hal Dane! I'll tell youfor the tenth time you're the only man alive that could have handledthat gyroscope, and done such a feat. Finest thing I ever heardof--finest, absolutely--" Colonel Wiljohn's boom choked suspiciously andhe blew his nose vigorously.
The nurse slipped back into the canvas-walled barracks that housed herpatients.
"And Hal," the Colonel had himself in control again, "Hal, boy, I wantyou to know that even in my first selfish grief, I didn't entirelyforget your hopes and plans. Days ago I wired to my men at the Axionfactories to speed the finishing work on your two planes, and to rushthem to San Francisco. Our mechanics will have everything ready for thedemonstration at the Onheim Contest, if you get there in time. Andwhether you tackle that Onheim Contest for me or not, isn't what reallymatters--the main thing is, you'll find your Wind Bird ready for you andyour great flight."
Hal's head seemed to whirl in an ecstasy. He had suppressed his everylonging till he became a being that snatched a few hours' sleep, scoutedfloods with tensed nerves as long as a shred of daylight lasted, andplunked onto a cot for a minimum of rest. Now in the twinkling of aneye, the suppression was off.
With the speed he knew how to get out of a plane, he could be in Denverat mid-morning tomorrow, and on to San Francisco in the early hours ofthat night. After that he could sleep a round of the clock and still bein time for the Onheim trials.
Instead of going back in the gyroscope dog plane that he had broughtdown and put to such good use, Colonel Wiljohn turned over to him one ofhis speed monoplanes, the fastest thing that had come into the floodcountry.
For all of Hal's feverish haste to be off, delays of various kinds heldhim for several hours. The monoplane, which had seen considerableservice, had to be fueled and groomed for the long diagonal across morethan half the continent. Friends that he had made in these gruelingtimes of day-and-night labor hunted him up to congratulate him on thework he had put over and to wish him God-speed for the future.
By the time Hal had stepped into the cockpit of the speed plane, itseemed that the whole population of Tent-City-on-the-Flood-Edge hadturned out to do him honor.
Colonel Wiljohn wrung his hand fervently.
"Your coming down here has been of more worth to me than I can ever putinto mere words," he said. "And I only wish I could be there when youstart the great flight."
"I wish that, too," Hal reached a hand down to his friend.
The motor roared, the blocks were knocked away, and the plane whizzedacross the field and soared into the night sky. The great shout of thecrowd seemed to rise with it.
Hal's mood was as bright as the moonlit heavens he sailed across. Ahundred miles! And still another hundred! He was speeding like somegigantic bird. His instruments marked a hundred and twenty miles anhour. He was fairly eating up space.
Before midnight he had crossed the Mississippi waters unwinding like agreat ribbon below the lights of Vicksburg.
Then flying slowed down. A dense fog rolled up about him. The moon wassmothered out above. Below him, disappeared the scattered lights thatmeant farm homes and the widespread glow of city illuminations. He wasalone, shrouded in a gray, dripping world with only his instruments toguide him.
As for direction, he had little fear of going astray. He was well usedto setting a course by his compass. The chief need was to hold toaltitude so as to clear the loftiest peak that might be in his path. Inthe heights he hoped to find a lessening of the mist, but the dampgrayness was here as everywhere else on this night.
As Hal Dane felt his way on into the night, eyes glued to the instrumentboard, there burst into his senses a sudden roar zooming through thefog.
The roar grew nearer. Another plane was riding high in the fog, andcoming toward him like a shot out of a shell.
Hal's first instinct was to rise higher to slip over and avoidcollision. His hand was on the pressure, when a quick thought sped likelightning through his brain--to rise high, that was natural instinct,that was what the other flyer would do, of course. There'd be two ridinghigh, straight to a head-on crash!
With a slip of wings, Hal began to drop. But his reasoning had playedhim wrong here. A sound rushing upon him told that the other flyer,disregarding instinct, had dived also.
Through a rent in the fog, Hal had a sudden awful glimpse of a dark,spreading mass riding him down. Like lightning, he shot to the left. Inthe other plane, another master hand veered the controls all that washumanly possible. Instead of crashing into a death grip, these twomechanical birds of the night slid by each other with a mere scraping ofwings.
For Hal Dane, though, that mere scrape was serious enough. At the shockof the other's passing blow, the whole monoplane trembled, and wentlimping on into the night with a bent wing that drooped dangerously.
After fifteen minutes of erratic flying, Hal had to take to ground. Thefog had mercifully lifted somewhat. He coaxed the crippled plane on tothe edge of a rosy glow that meant a town and landed on the outskirts ofthis.
Hal spent the rest of the night in trips back and forth from the town,in rousting out mechanics, hunting up tools and repair material, and inrepairing the wing by lantern light.
At last he was able to glide up along the airways again. Instead ofhumming into Denver in mid-morning, as he had planned, it was deep intoanother night when he finally zoomed into the airport of that Coloradometropolis,--turned his plane over to competent mechanics, and stumbledfor sleeping quarters.
Before dawn, he was under way again. This time luck was with him and hedid the last thousand-mile lap of his journey in less than nine hours.
As it was, he arrived in San Francisco without even an hour's spacebetween him and the great Onheim Safety Device try-out. No time for anyrest for himself, no time for any preliminary testing of the splendidnew gyroscope plane fresh from the skids of the Wiljohn factory. All hecould do was give a thorough ground inspection of every part of thisstrange mechanism of flight that he had conceived, and that the Wiljohnfactories had developed with the utmost care. There it stood--short,fixed wings, sturdy, black-enameled body, a silvered whirl of gyroscopewings above the fuselage. The strangest looking creation for flight manhad ever invented! Strange looking--yes! But if it worked, it would beman's most forward step in safe flying!
It was perfect, just as he had planned it, from its geared motor to itscuriously flexible wind blades. Exultation filled Hal Dane as he lookedon this thing he had created.
It was an exultation that was short-lived though. When he went out tothe exhibition grounds and saw the veritable trap that had been builtfor him to rise from, his heart went cold.
Through misunderstanding of the wording of Colonel Wiljohn's frantictelegraphic efforts to get all things ready for Hal Dane's flightdemonstration, the Wiljohn workmen had built no platform for the planeto rise from as had been expected. Instead, they had built a sort oftower inclosure out of which the strange new gyroscope was to take itsflight.
A white-faced Fuz McGinnis waited for Hal just outside the
door of thistower that looked like a death trap. He hadn't seen Fuz for months nowsince demonstration flying had taken McGinnis into half the states ofthe Union on Wiljohn business.
The two young fellows gripped hands.
"News of this outlandish tower has spread like wildfire. I heard aboutit three states away, and came to see for myself. And now that I'veseen--" McGinnis thumped a clenched fist against the wooden wall,"I--well, it's impossible! You mustn't undertake a rise out of thatthing. It will kill you. Any kind of plane has got to have someleeway--"
"The gyroscope," Hal protested, "it's different, only--"
"Only this, it would batter you to death in those four walls!" Fuz beganto lead Hal away.
A huge crowd jammed the exhibition grounds. Word of this new thing, thisimpossible flight of an airplane up out of the mouth of a tower, hadspread far and wide. Men were in groups over the grounds, discussing,waving arms, arguing loudly. The words "Hal Dane--Wiljohn--gyroscope!"were on every lip.
Hal Dane's brain seethed. He hardly heard Fuz earnestly explaining howthe affair could be safely managed--mere change of announcement--risefrom ground instead of tower.
Better to make no rise at all, Hal's brain told him dully. After thishurrah of advertised excitement, a ground rise would be a flat fall forany interest whatever in the gyroscope. He was suddenly terribly tired.He'd been all of a million years without sleep, it seemed. He'd made avast effort to get here--for nothing! Nobody'd be interested in thegyroscope anymore. And the Wiljohn Works needed the uplift of thatgyroscope success, had banked on it. Mother and Uncle Tel--what was hegoing to do about them? He'd counted on making them comfortable out ofthis success. And now success had slipped from his grasp--his plans allgummed up by the foolish mistake of some workmen.
Disappointment and weariness were like some subtle drug, doping him intosleep as he stood here.
They were before the announcer's stand. Stupidly, Hal listened whileMcGinnis made some sort of explanation to the man holding themegaphone--all about changed plan, rise from ground--
"No! No!" Hal's voice was so loud that he startled himself. "Tellthem--just what you'd planned to say!"
He wrenched out of the grasp of the startled Fuz McGinnis, and sped backtoward the strange tower hangar. Men had already trundled thelimp-bladed rotor machine in through the wide door at the base. Halslipped in, closed and locked that door.
Fuz was a true friend, he meant well--but Fuz couldn't know what thisthing meant to him. To fail at this would mean he could have no heartfor that dream flight, his exploring of the ocean airpaths on the wingsof the winds. A failure couldn't conquer the ocean! He'd either succeedat this--or die at it.
As Hal Dane leaned against the inner wall of that tower hangar in whichthe gyroscope plane was prisoned, he could hear the excited voice of thespeaker of the day addressing the crowd through the great radioamplifier that carried his message to all the throng gathered there.
"It has been said," the voice of the speaker rang out, "it has been saidthat the climax of aviation had been reached when man learned to fly aswell as birds. For birds most surely had the lead on man, having flownfor something like twenty million years, while man has merely tried hiswings out during about twenty years.
"Man learned of the birds. He patterned his flying machine after theprinciples of bird flight. He made the ailerons to shift at wing tip andthus to bank his machine in soaring, just as a bird lifts its wing tip.He patterned his light, very light framework after the bird's hollowbones. So man learned to fly like a bird.
"But now we are going to show you that man has learned to fly betterthan a bird.
"Think of the lark, she has to have space ten times her size to dartforward in before the lift that soars her aloft.
"Take the great South American condor with wing spread of ten feet. Puthim in a twenty-foot pen and you have him a prisoner for life. Thecondor needs many times more than the twenty-foot space for his forwardrun before his great pinions will catch the air and lift him up into theskies.
"But man has surpassed the birds. He has learned to fly, and he haslearned to rise without great space.
"Within this restricted tower is man's latest achievement, a gyroscopeon a Wiljohn-Dane plane. With no space to dart or glide, this plane willrise straight up."
"Would it, oh, but would it?" Hal Dane's heart beat ice cold against hisleather shirt. This same type motor had done its duty down there in thedanger of the great Three-River Flood. It had risen from a tiny knoll,risen from a crumbling, flood-washed island. Even though over-burdenedwith human freight, it had risen almost straight into the air. But HalDane had been superman, then. Guided by superpower, he had hurledhimself recklessly into the jaws of death to save life. In that time ofthrilling awfulness, the great plane had answered to his every touch.Like some superhuman creation it had shot up from crumbling death, waterdeath, swamp death.
But now, circumscribed by four man-made walls, wooden, spiritless thingsthat made no real call to courage or feel of power--now would this greatplane rise, respond to his will?
Not to rise straight up would mean death--a crashing, roaring piece ofmachinery battering against walls.
If only there had been a chance to try this tower out! But there hadbeen no chance for anything, no chance to think, even.
With doom upon him, the young flyer slid into the cockpit of the squat,heavy plane.
Whir of motor, crazy tipping and swaying of the machine--then the thrillof power rushing into Hal Dane's veins. She was rising. She wasanswering his prayer. She was superbird, four walls could not prisonher.
With a rushing whirl of her now stiffening gyroscope wings, the greatmachine lifted herself swiftly, steadily; rose in that amazing space offour wooden tower walls scarce ten feet distance from her machinery onany side.
Straight up--then away over the great, shouting concourse whirred theplane. Hal Dane, superbirdman, rode high in the skies, he swooped, hedarted in an ecstasy of freedom of the air.
Then wheeling, circling till he hung above the tower with its fourwalls. He held position for a long minute, then under control droppedslowly, down, down, straight into the maw of the tower.