CALL OF THE WINDS
Like one come back to the present from a far journey into eternity, Hal
Dane sat for a space within the gyroscope's cockpit. He hardly heard the
tumult 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 machine
that had made its triumphal straight-rise, and its equally triumphant
down-drop.
Fuz McGinnis, red hair on end, eyes blazing with excitement, was the
first 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 to
be President, even!"
Then Mr. Rankin, representative of the great Onheim Prize Fund, was
pumping his hand up and down, "Congratulations, Hal Dane! The award is
bound to be yours. There's not the slightest doubt that your
extraordinary performance has beaten every other safety record set here
today. Things'll have to be confirmed at headquarters though--will be
letting you know."
Once Hal was outside the hangar, the surging crowd pressed close. He was
the center of a shouting, thrilling excitement. Newspaper men fought
their way to him. Questions were hurled at him thick and fast.
Could that thing be counted on always to rise straight-up, and to sit
back down just like that, behind a wall, or a steeple, or anything? Hal
rather thought it could, considering the flood test, and now this
shooting up out of a tower.
That being the case, did he realize that this invention was likely to
revolutionize the airplane business? Had he caught the vision of what
the gyroscope could do in the way of taking off and landing on a mere
roof top? Had he any plans for the now very possible city-to-be which
would have roof-top terminals on all its down-town buildings?
Heavens, how these reporter fellows could shoot off questions! Hal
answered, "Yes, and yes again, and, well no, he hadn't drawn any plans
of future cities--he'd been too busy drawing plans of airplanes--" And
then Hal ducked for cover.
"Here, Fuz, help me get out of this," he whispered, "there's somewhere
else I've got to be, now--right away!"
So Fuz had slid into the cockpit of his own Wiljohn biplane, warmed up
the motor, and held the machine in readiness behind the long mechanics'
hall near the center of the grounds. Ten minutes later, Hal Dane entered
one door of this building, went out by another door, flung a leg over
the cockpit, and was in beside Fuz. In the next moment, he was riding
high above the throng, fleeing from fame, on the way to the "somewhere
else"--and that was the Mazarin Hangars on the city outskirts. Here was
housed his own plane, his Wind Bird, that he'd not yet seen in all its
completeness.
He felt light of heart, almost giddy with his sense of freedom. Out
there on the exhibition grounds by his successful demonstration of the
Wiljohn-Dane gyroscope, he had paid his debt to the man that had most
befriended him, Colonel Wiljohn.
As they landed out in Mazarin, a man in the Wiljohn uniform, who had
been pacing back and forth before one of the low, single-plane hangars,
waved to them, then turned about and quickly unlocked the wide, sliding
doors.
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 completed
the ship in his absence. Suppose mistakes had been made, suppose--
His heart seemed thundering up into his very ears, his face was white
and strained as he plunged into the semi-darkness of the hangar. The
attendant slipped in behind him, switched on wall lights, overhead
lights.
"A-ah!" It was a long, exultant, in-drawn breath of ecstasy. Hal Dane
stared as though he could never get enough of looking.
The ship--his Wind Bird--she was a beauty! Slender crimson body, silver
wing, every inch of her streamlined to split the wind like an arrow!
Slenderly beautiful--but what strength there was here! There was a
compactness to this winged creation that only an exact knowledge of
certain sciences could give. In the peculiar curved shape of the wing
surface lay the solution to one of the deepest hidden secrets of flight.
The old flat shape of airplane wings had depended entirely upon air
pressure from below for the rise. The peculiar curve to the Wind Bird's
silvered wing would take full advantage of a thrice greater power--the
air's suction pull from above. The material in the wing was in itself a
marvel, laminated strata, light in the extreme, yet almost as tough as
iron.
Engine streamlined, as well as body! To the unpracticed eye, the
modernistic Conqueror-Eisel engine might have seemed absurd in its
smallness and its simplicity. But Hal Dane knew from long
experimentation that in its simplicity lay the fundamental reliability
of this new type engine. He spun the motor and sat back on his heels to
listen to the smooth gentle hum, music to his mechanic's ear.
Everything was as he had planned it--great fuel tank for the
high-powered oil he would burn instead of gasoline, another tank to hold
the liquid, life-giving oxygen he would need in the heights. The latest
life-saving devices were installed: radio sending and receiving
apparatus, flares, rockets, detachable compass, and a rubber lifeboat in
addition to those appliances that, in an emergency, could convert the
plane wing itself into a sea-going raft.
It was Hal's plan that nothing that could be humanly prepared for should
be left to mere chance.
The need for such care had already been driven home to him by the tragic
fate of two of his gallant rivals in this great flight. Just the day
before he arrived in San Francisco, young Randall and the veteran, Ed
West, in their great trimotor had made their start at winging the
Pacific for the Valiant Prize. Either overload, or some fault of
mechanism 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 sea
edge--where, luckily for him, there were boats a-plenty for the rescue.
With these hazards in mind, Hal kept testing and retesting every part of
his equipment and mechanism. He bunked that night in the hangar, and
with the morning was again at his work. Terrific coastal rains set in.
But snug within the closed cockpit of the Wind Bird, Hal joyously
challenged the downpour.
At the first flight test, the silver and crimson ship rode the rain
clouds with a thrilling swiftness. For the second flight, loaded with
all the weight that an ocean flyer needs must bear, the Wind Bird
labored somewhat in the rise, found her speed more slowly. That initial
slowness was a thing that had to be borne with. Compensation would come
in the continuous quickening of speed as each hour of flight burned up
its quota of fuel, and, degree by degree, lifted the weight.
For two days of rain, Hal continued his tests. In between periods of
work he flung himself down to sleep like a log, letting nature repair
the 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't
want to talk. What he wanted was action, to be off.
All his life seemed to have been leading up to this one event--his
take-off for his viking flight on the winds of the ocean. And here was
the take-off held up by rainstorm, an endless one it appeared.
Along the Pacific coast, five other flyers were ready too, awaiting
weather conditions for the great journey.
Storm and fog kept Hal Dane on edge for another twelve hours. Then he
decided to wait no longer.
Why couldn't one take-off in a rainstorm? No worse than running into
rainstorms out over the waters! On such a journey a flyer had to face
all kinds of weather anyway.