CHAPTER X
FINAL PREPARATIONS
After getting out of the airplane, Mr. Giddings was thoughtful for someminutes. Nor did he speak until the boys had pushed the machine intothe hangar. Then he said, with deep earnestness:
"Young men, a great load has been removed from my mind by this recentperformance of the Sky-Bird II. I have now not the slightest doubts ofher adaptability to make a round-the-world trip, and if she performsthen as she did this morning, we are not only going to defeat the_Clarion_'s crew, but we are going to smash all existing records for ajourney of the kind. I wish to know if you really think you couldoperate this machine steadily night and day, say for a couple of weeks,stopping only for fuel and food?"
"By alternating the engines--yes, sir; no doubt of it," declared JohnRoss without a moment's hesitation, while Tom Meeks nodded his frowsyhead energetically.
"Then," said Mr. Giddings, "you may consider that's what the entirefour of you will have to do in a few months, as soon as we can pick outa route and get fuel supplies at the different airports or stops foryou. John, you and Tom may consider yourselves under salary right onuntil after this race; there will be enough for you to do, helping mewith arrangements and taking care of the airplane."
"Well, but how about Paul and me, dad?" broke in Bob anxiously; "aren'twe going to have anything to do?"
"Oh, you two will have enough to do going to school, I think," laughedMr. Giddings; "but, to satisfy you, I will let you both help John andTom select a route and make out a schedule. Do this just as soon asyou can, so that I may be able to give Mr. Wrenn, the publisher of the_Clarion_, a copy. He can then make intelligent preparations for hisown crew. I am going to give my rival every consideration in thismatter, so that he cannot do any howling if we beat him. It must be anout-and-out fair race, do you understand?"
All nodded.
"Have you heard anything about the other crew yet, Mr. Giddings?"inquired Paul. "I mean, do you know what sort of a craft they aregoing to use, or who is going to fly against us?"
"I am as much in the dark about those points as you young men," was thereply. "I judge that Mr. Wrenn, who is an astute business man, willkeep us in ignorance of his personnel until the last minute. The factis, I am going to treat him to a dose of his own medicine in thisrespect. So be careful not to let the public get close to thismachine, and talk with no one about it."
With that the publisher and Bob drove home, but the latter came back inthe afternoon, and all four young men immediately repaired to theYonkers Public Library with a blank tablet, there to work out the routeand schedule.
It was no easy task. In the first place, they wished the route to beas close to the equator at all times as possible, so that their line oftravel would approximate in distance the world's estimatedcircumference of 24,899 miles. In the second place, for stops theymust choose cities or towns with either established landing-fields, orwith grounds level enough for this purpose. In the third place, theseairports must be so divided that they would not have to be visitedduring the hours of darkness, for few if any of them would be likely tohave efficient enough lighting systems to make night landings safe.
Within fifteen minutes the boys had the long table in front of themliterally covered with geographies, atlases, loose maps, andencyclopaedias. Paul even brought up a globe as large as a pumpkin,while Bob was not content until he had secured a score of back numbersof travel magazines. Into this divers collection of diagrams andreading matter they dove with an avidity which would have surprised theteachers they had when they were in grammar school, if they could haveseen them. It soon became evident that they would not only need aroute and schedule to make their journey successful, but also anenormous amount of general information about the countries they wouldpass over.
"We'll have to study trade winds, oceanic storm conditions,temperatures, inhabitants, topography, and so forth, and so forth,"drawled Tom Meeks. "Say, fellows, I feel like kicking myself to thinkI didn't study my geography more and shoot paper-wads less, when I wasa kid at school."
"We'll have to do a lot of cramming, that's sure," averred John; "butwe have several months for that. Just now we want to jump into thisroute and schedule."
They made up several tentative routes, only to discard them. Finally,after several hours' work, they had one which everybody seemed to agreewas the best that could be picked out. With the schedule, which wasfigured on the basis of 120 miles an hour airplane speed, the draftlooked like this:
_Miles Airport Arrive Leave_ ---- PANAMA ------------ 1:00p 20th 1672 Georgetown 5:30a 21st 7:30a 21st 1154 Para 6:00p 21st 9:00p 21st 2402 Freetown 6:15p 22d 9:15p 22d 1980 Kuka 1:00p 23d 8:00p 23d 2015 Aden 6:00a 24th 9:00a 24th 2116 Colombo 5:30a 25th 8:30a 25th 1612 Singapore 6:00p 25th 9:00p 25th 2218 Port Darwin 5:30p 26th 8:30p 26th 3826 Apia 5:45a *27th 8:45a 27th 2100 Nukahiva 9:00a 28th 12:00n 28th 3154 San Cristobal 6:00p 29th 9:00p 29th 650 PANAMA 5:30a 30th ------------- ----- 24899
* Gain of 1 day by reason of crossing 180th Meridian, or InternationalDate Line, between Port Darwin and Apia.
Bob Giddings carried home a copy of this schedule, and the followingMonday morning all four young men met by appointment in the privateoffice of the publisher of the _Daily Independent_. After they wereseated, Mr. Giddings brought forth the tentative draft, studied it afew moments, and then asked:
"What is your fuel capacity, boys?"
"Our tanks will hold enough gasoline and oil to carry us a littlebetter than five thousand miles, throttled down to an average of onehundred and twenty miles an hour, the basis on which we figured outthis schedule, sir," answered John.
"Would it make a difference if you flew faster than that?"
"Oh, yes," said John; "the faster a pilot flies the more fuel he usesper mile. Full out--that is, going at the limit of her speed--theSky-Bird probably would not cover more than three-thousand miles."
"I am glad to know this," said Mr. Giddings. "I see that your cruisingradius is sufficient to cover your longest jumps at any reasonablespeed. Let me see; you allow yourselves three hours' stop at eachairport; will that be long enough?"
"Plenty, sir," said Tom; "we figure that we can easily refuel in thattime, and attend to any local affairs we may have."
"I notice your total mileage is exactly equal to the estimatedcircumference of the world," remarked the publisher. "That shows greatcare in the selection of this route to meet my viewpoint; but may I askhow you know your distances between airports, as here recorded, arecorrect? From whence did you get these mileages?"
"Bob and I figured them out, sir," spoke up Paul.
"How?"
"Why, like this, dad," explained Bob. "We knew there were 360 degreesto the world; we divided the circumference of 24,899 miles by 360, andobtained approximately 69.5 miles to a degree. By taking a map of theworld and finding the number of degrees between any two airports it wasnot difficult to come pretty close to the actual distance in milesbetween them."
"Very good; very good, indeed," approved his father. "I think I havethe right sort of men on this job. But here is another thing whichoccurs to me: Have you based your time of arrival and leaving at eachport upon local time or New York time?"
"Local time," stated Paul. "If we had not done so we could not havearranged the schedule with any accuracy at all, as regards daylight anddarkness and the lapping of time. With our watches set to New Yorktime, we might expect to land at a station in broad daylight, only tofind that we were really coming in after dark. Another thing: Ourfiguring showed us that the lappages of time, all added together,exactly totaled one day of twenty-four hours, which we gain bytraveling eastward. So, while the schedule on a calendar at
home wouldonly show ten days which we would be gone, we would in reality be awayone day longer, or eleven."
"Your local times may be wrong," hinted Mr. Giddings.
"I don't think so, sir; we proved them correct," stated Paul, withconviction.
"How?"
"After the same method we used in getting the mileage, sir. You see,we knew that time eastward keeps getting later, and that this rate isfour minutes to every degree. We just counted the degrees betweenplaces and figured it out on that basis."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Mr. Giddings, who was far from as ignorant ofthese processes as he led his visitors to suppose. "Boys, I wish tocompliment you very highly upon this piece of work. When I firstlooked at the schedule and saw that an airplane meeting itsrequirements would make this trip squarely around the world in sevenand a half hours less than ten days I could scarcely credit my senses,and I figured it all over to make sure you had made no mistake. Ifound out you had not. If you can maintain an average speed of onehundred and twenty miles, and can make up any unforeseen delays bygreater speed, I must admit it really looks possible for you to be backinside of ten days. That is better than I actually hoped for, youngmen,--far better! In fact the situation, as I view it, containswonderful opportunities for both newspapers in the way of sales andadvertising. I do not doubt but that I can handle this affair in sucha manner that I can afford to give each of you five thousand dollars ifyou make the journey within these ten days."
"Five thousand dollars!" cried our friends in unison, while Bobexploded: "But, dad, just how do you figure this out?"
"Mr. Wrenn and I will exploit this contest in our newspapers--let thewhole universe know that it is coming off; advise the people that theaviators are to be provided with the most modern airplanes, andequipped with wireless by means of which they will keep us informedfrequently of their whereabouts; that they will have cameras and sendus pictures; that these bulletins shall be issued in extra editions ofour newspapers at least three or four times a day; and to cap theclimax, we will put up large bulletin boards in front of our buildings,on which there will be painted a chart of the trip, showing everyscheduled stop, country, and ocean crossed. This will be electricallylighted at night, and as you boys fly in your machine away off in somedistant part of the world, our bulletin board operators will followyour course on their huge charts, and represent you with a miniatureairplane. In fact, I plan to get the _Clarion_ to 'phone over reportsof their crew as fast as received, I doing likewise with them, and thenwe can have two dummy airplanes on each of our boards, showing the racein earnest at all stages of the journey. This would cause greatexcitement to the street onlookers. All in all, it would make ournewspapers the most talked about in the whole country, we would gainthousands of new subscribers, millions of extras would be sold,thousands of dollars' worth of new advertising contracts could be made,and our present rates increased on account of our new prestige. Now,you see, it will be up to you young men to keep our office suppliedwith your whereabouts as often as you can. Do that, and beat our rivalcrew, and I shall be pretty well satisfied if you don't quite make thetrip in ten days."
"We will do our part, sir," responded John, speaking for all.
There was a little further talk; and then they took their leave, wellsatisfied with the turn of events, and each determined to win his fivethousand dollar trophy if it were at all possible.