WINGING WESTWARD
At midnight Hal Dane made his decision. He snatched a few hours' sleep.
Then in the early dawning he went out to inspect the Mazarin Field
runway. Not so good--ground wet and heavy with days of drenching rain!
But as the downpour seemed scheduled to continue indefinitely, things
could only get worse instead of better. So--well, it might as well be
now!
In spite of the foreboding, heavy weather, Hal Dane's heart was light.
The past days of indecision had sat like a burden upon his soul, and now
that his mind was finally and firmly made up, he suddenly went ecstatic,
happy beyond all measure.
He caught himself whistling as he gave his plane its last thorough
looking over. It seemed to be in perfect shape. Whew! What a beauty it
was! He slid an affectionate hand along its polished length as the men
trundled it out into the field. There he slung aboard his provisions and
water, climbed in and gave the signal for the blocks to be knocked away.
The motor roared and the plane started down the runway.
"Wish I were going too," yelled the red-headed McGinnis as he raced
alongside.
"Wish so--" Hal's words were lost in the thud of the motor. The machine
labored forward, gathering speed slowly. Wet, muddy ground and the last
load of fuel seemed to have rooted it to earth. Would it never rise? Was
this splendid attempt to meet disaster in the very beginning?
At last the heavily-loaded Wind Bird began to lift gallantly, rose to
barely clear the tree line, then zoomed up into the sky.
Even at this unearthly hour, a horde of spectators milled on the ground
below, their hearts' hopes rising with this brilliant attempt of young
Dane. For the young fellow, the shyest of heroes, who had run away from
his first taste of fame, had overnight fired the enthusiasm of the whole
nation.
As though lifted on the shouts of the onlookers, the lone flyer in his
Wind Bird took the air and went up, up into the heights.
He leveled out for a while to get speed, then rose another thousand
feet.
Hal Dane had taken off at a little after six o'clock in the morning, and
he had headed out with his back directly to the rising sun--or at least
with his back to the place where the sun would have been seen rising if
the cloud banks had not hidden it.
In a few moments, the skyscrapers of San Francisco, looking white and
spectral, were swallowed up in the gray-brown pall that enshrouded the
Golden Gate. Hal's last picture of them was of mere tower tops that
seemed to hang like a magic city in the clouds. A forerunner this, of
the mirages he was to encounter later on, when magic cities would seem
to rise before his tired eyes, then crumble away among the clouds.
Below him swept an immensity of ocean, the color of ashes in the misty
haze. Nowhere was there any mark to guide him. From now on he must rely
entirely upon his instruments, and Hal began to keep a wary eye upon his
inductor compass.
That compass was the most remarkable of all the splendid equipment
features of the Wind Bird. It was based upon the principle of the
relation between the earth's magnetic field and the magnetic field
generated in the airplane. When the plane's course had been set so that
the needle registered zero on this compass, any deviation would cause
the needle to swing away from zero in the direction of the error. Such
an error could be corrected by flying the plane with the needle at the
same distance on the other side of zero, and for the same time that the
error had been committed. This would set the aircraft's nose back on her
course again.
When well out over the ocean, he took calculations and set his course
due northwest. He was figuring on covering the ocean in a
crescent-shaped sweep that would have the advantage of sighting the
Aleutian chain of land points at better than midway, and it was a course
that he hoped would send him well within the range of certain air
currents.
As his course steadied, the roar of his ninefold engine assumed a
pleasing grandeur, like music flung out over these far spaces. The motor
was working to perfection, humming along under its mighty load. It was a
comfort to know too that every pound of fuel burned meant a lightening
of the weight and an added capacity for speed, more speed.
In a flare of fire, the sunlight burst through the gray world of clouds.
The rainstorm was lifting. Weather conditions that had frowned so on his
take-off were changing to a golden glory to speed him onward. But Hal
Dane knew all too well that this fickle glory of sunshine could change
back to black thunderheads in the twinkling of an eye.
To the right of his plane, he caught a glimpse of a faint dark blurred
line. That could be the west coast, the land of America that he was
speeding away from now in a northwestern diagonal.
Was this blurred glimpse all that he'd ever see of land again? Who could
tell? He might land safe on those other shores, and again, a hundred
different causes could crash his gallant sky ship into the gray waves,
to sink eventually to the ocean bottom.
Hal squared back his shoulders, lifted his head. He would force dark
thoughts out of his mind. There must only be room in his plans for hope.
He sent the throttle up a notch. More speed! His heart caught the lift
of power from the throbbing motor. Exultation, and the wild spirit of
the Vikings surged through his veins. His Norse ancestors had crossed an
ocean in a frail sea skiff. And now he, like some atom adrift in the
immense wastes of the sky, was daring the air currents on man-made
wings. Hal Dane felt a thrill of power and glory shoot through him. It
was speed on to whatever the end was, to death, or to victory!
For this longest of long distance flights where every extra pound
counted against success, Hal had stripped his plane to the barest
necessities of weight in food and equipment. Then at the last minute he
had carried things, light as air, yet weighty in a certain kind of
content. God-speed telegrams from his mother, from the faculty of his
old flying school, from Colonel Wiljohn! There was also a yellow slip of
telegraphic paper bearing him congratulations and word that his
gyroscope had won the Onheim Prize. The hopes and thoughts of his
friends were going with him on this wild venture.
All unknown to him, the thoughts of a nation were following the Wind
Bird. A ship that had glimpsed a flyer going up coast had radioed word
back. Other messages swept through the air from a far-out fishing fleet
where the lone flyer crossed human sea trails again. This word was
bulletined in theaters and picture show houses, was on a million lips.
Wind Bird had gone thus far. How was the weather? Could he make it?
At midday the lone flyer checked up position and headed out over the
Pacific in a more westerly direction. Far to the north of him would be
situated Sitka, behind him should lie Vancouver--it was in this air
range that he, on preliminary explorations, had located a great current
of the wind that flowed west in the heights.
If he and the Wind Bird could efficiently ride this current it would
mean speed such as he had heretofore only dreamed of, would mean time
and fuel-saving in the great Trans-Pacific crossing.
In preparation for his chill rise up into the earth's stratosphere, or
upper air, Hal Dane snugly closed the throat of his heavily padded,
leather-covered suit of down and feathers. Fur-lined moccasins over his
boots, and a leather head mask lined with fur, which with the oxygen
mask entirely covered the face, completed the costume. His goggles had
already been specially prepared with an inside coating of anti-freezing
gelatine, supposed to prevent the formation of ice to minus sixty
degrees Fahrenheit. Ice on the inside of the goggles would be a
temporary blind, as Hal well knew.
Worse than the terrible cold was the lack of oxygen he would have to
combat up in the heights of rarefied air. But a marvelous artificial aid
had been prepared for this also. In the Wind Bird was installed a
special oxygen apparatus that could furnish him a strong flow of
life-giving gas through a tube adjusted to the mouthpiece of his helmet.
With minute care, Hal examined every section of his two separate systems
of gaseous oxygen, the main system, and the emergency system. He wanted
to be very sure that nothing was left to mere luck. Other men before him
had ridden high. But today, he must ride the highest stratosphere if he
were to really explore the vast speeding wind river that his other
searchings had merely tapped.
Hal Dane began to climb. By degrees he forced the Wind Bird up, the
curved vacuum of her specially-built wing meeting the air-pull from
above to aid in a mighty lifting.
Up he went in great sweeping spirals, ever mounting higher and higher,
the engine of the Wind Bird working beautifully. The altimeter told him
he was at the height of seventeen thousand feet,--now he had reached
eighteen, nineteen, twenty thousand! His ship was still climbing, acting
beautifully. But he, Hal Dane, was not acting right. In the face of
triumph, his whole sky world went suddenly gray and dreary, he felt a
queer lassitude, and a slowing up of faculties.
The oxygen! In the excitement, he had forgotten to draw on it!
With a languid movement, he thrust the tube into his mask. A few deep
breaths and his gray world brightened. More oxygen, more,--and he had
changed back into his old self, ready to think and act quickly.
Now he was entering into a favorable wind that sped him in the rise. He
went to thirty thousand feet.
Thirty-four thousand! Thirty-five! Thirty-six!
The cold was now intense. For all his furred garments, there was no
shutting out the frigidity. It ate to the very marrow. But Hal Dane's
heart was hot within him, burning in its thrill of exultation. He was
riding thirty-eight thousand feet above the earth, and riding with the
whizzing speed of a bullet shot from a mighty gun. His plane, capable of
two hundred miles an hour, had slid into a two-hundred-mile wind here in
the upper air, and it was hurtling forward at the appalling speed of
four hundred miles per hour.
Speed--speed! Hal Dane's heart throbbed hot and wild. He was riding
faster than ever mortal rode before, swooping before the mad currents of
the river of the wind. The crossing of the great Pacific will now be a
matter of hours--not a matter of days. And his the Viking sky boat that
first dared the fierce gale of the wind path!
The gale he was riding gathered power. His speedometer mounted
erratically, jerking up records of additional fives and tens of miles.
Ten--twenty, thirty--four hundred and forty miles per hour.
A curious vibration of his engine startled him. But he drove away all
thoughts of danger. The mileage was a magnet that held his eyes. Speed,
speed! Riding high and fast! The sky was his height limit. He was
reeling off a record. He must hold to it, must speed on.
Riding higher and faster than any human since creation! Thrilling
thought--thrilling thought--thrilling thought--his head was knocking
queerly. He leaned forward, and the instruments in the cockpit became
dim and shaky. He was drifting into a semi-delirium from which he could
not seem to rouse himself. His mind refused to focus upon what it must
do.
His dulling senses caught a thud-thud-thud! Engine vibration so great
that it seemed the machine must tear apart!