HIS NAME ACROSS THE SKY
Deep in the night, and in a dense fog, Hal Dane hovered over a faint
earthly glow that he felt must be Tokio, capital city of Japan. Hours
ago he had straightened the wide deflection of his course that had taken
him astray over the edge of the long peninsula of Kamchatka.
As he checked up again by chart and map, his wearying senses told him
this must be it--the Tokio that he had crossed thousands upon thousands
of miles of ocean to reach.
He drifted down to four thousand feet altitude. From here flood lights
and beacons were dimly visible, more assurance that he must be over the
imperial city of the Orient's most progressive civilization.
A thrill shot through Hal Dane, lifting the great weariness of the forty
hours' continuous flying. Aches and chill and battering of storms were
forgotten now that the fight was ending. He had done what he had set out
to do--crossed the greatest of the oceans in a single non-stop flight.
His fingers began to tap an incessant query on his sending-radio outfit,
"Landing field? Landing field? Landing field?"
And suddenly he was in touch with answers winging their way up to him
from the ground below--"Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!" Over and over he got
those two words--"Tokio Asahi!"
He was in touch with humanity again! Men on this Japanese land knew he
was winging his way above them. Men were answering his call. "Tokio
Asahi"--there it came again. What did it mean?
His radio was bringing him words, but they meant nothing to him. His
only comfort lay in the fact that men knew he was here in the air, and
that probably they were making some preparation for his landing.
It seemed to him that now a glimmer of flares burned brighter in a
certain spot. He hoped these marked a landing field, hoped also that
radio landing beacons would be here to respond to the visual radio
receiver on his instrument board.
Down he came in long sweeping circles, seeking a place to land. A wrong
landing could mean death, not only to him, but to hapless ones he might
crash upon down there on the fog-blanketed earth. For dreadful sickening
seconds, apprehension rode him. His heart seemed clutched in iron
fingers, his face was white under the strain as his eyes watched the
instrument board.
Ah! they were quivering--those two strange little reeds that by their
vibration told the good news of radio beacons waiting down there to help
him make his landing. With a joyous surge of relief in his heart, Hal
Dane began his long, slanting, final downward plunge. An over-quivering
of the left reed told him that he was diverging too much on that side.
With a quick swerve of the airplane, he put both reeds back into a
balancing quiver, and thus followed their direction straight down the
path of the beacon to a landing.
He had landed! He was in Japan!
The young flyer had been so engrossed in blind flying to a perfect
landing by instruments alone, that it came as a shock to him to look out
of his machine's window and see the huge crowd that awaited him on this
Oriental landing field. The throng had scattered somewhat to make room
for the ship's downward plunge.
Hal Dane thrust a blond head out of the window. "I'm Hal Dane," he said
simply, "in the Wind Bird. We--we made it, I reckon."
At that, the crowd swept in. They had no more idea of what he was saying
than he had had of their "Tokio Asahi" that had been radioed up to him.
But the boy's smile and his quietness of manner had won them.
Radios had been busy for two days in Japan, as well as in other parts of
the world. From the time Hal Dane had left America, radio had winged its
messages back and forth to various parts of the civilized universe.
The phenomenal courage of a boy alone flying the greatest ocean, had
stirred the heart of Japan. And now that Hal Dane, Viking of the Sky,
had made his landing, Japan set him high on her throng's shoulders.
It was a shouting, laughing, good-natured crowd, gay with the colors of
Japanese girls' sashed kimonos mingling with the black of more sedate
native costumes, and with the trim modern uniforms of Japan's host of
young army flyers.
In the first wild rush, the plucky American aviator was fairly mobbed.
The shouting, howling throng, wild with joy and excitement, hauled him
clear of his plane. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, American fashion,
or even just touch the garments of this one that had flown the skies.
Trim, sturdy members of the imperial air force, got to him, lifted him
upon their khaki shoulders. Thus he was borne through the streets of
old, old Tokio where the automobile and the jinrikisha mingled as
unconcernedly as did the old-time temples and tea shops mingle with
eight-story skyscrapers and picture theaters.
Behind him, edging the landing field, rose a fine modern building. Hal
Dane waved an inquiring hand at it.
"Tokio Asahi!" came the surprising answer that was shouted from many
throats.
Hal nodded his head as if he understood, but puzzlement seethed in his
brain. What did this queer shout mean that greeted him everywhere, even
met him in the air before landing?
As the triumphal procession made its way down the street, newsboys,
carrying bundles of papers, tore through the swarming crowds, ringing
bells, flying small flags, and shouting loudly as they waved these
"extras" just off the press.
Their shout floated back to Hal with an irritatingly familiar refrain,
"Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!"
And suddenly, from his perch on men's shoulders, that lifted him
hero-wise above the crowd--Hal Dane burst into boyish laughter. He had
it, that "Tokio Asahi,"--it was the name of Japan's greatest
newspaper--the newspaper with over a million circulation, and with a
most modern of modern air mail deliveries. That was evidently the
Asahi's own great landing field he had arrived above, so naturally it
was the name Asahi that had been radioed up to him.
Well, the Asahi was certainly an up and coming publication. As young
Dane peered down from his place at the second army of newsboys speeding
with flag and bell advertisement through the mob, he saw with
astonishment that his own picture already smudgily adorned these latest
extras. And men and women, gone wild over this young conqueror of the
skies, were scrambling for these pictures.
At last the efficient Tokio police rescued Hal Dane from the
rough-and-tumble admiration of the street crowds. Somehow they got him
free and rushed him into a building. And here Hal found himself shaking
hands with Charles MacVeagh, American Ambassador to Japan. Here he met
Baron Giichi Tanaka, Premier of Japan; Suzuki, the Home Minister;
Mitsuchi, head of Finance Department, and other notable figures of the
Japanese capital,--statesmen whose names were known all over the world.
Although he was now in a daze of weariness, young Dane forced himself to
answer quietly and simply their many questions. To hold the fascinated
interest of such great men was an overwhelming honor. But something
besides honor was overwhelming the gallant aviator. Sleep, sleep--how he
ached for it!
Then next thing, he was stretching out his weary bones in the deep
comfort of a bed and getting his first real rest in two days and the
better part of two nights.
When he at last awoke, he found that in all reality he had written his
name across the sky! Newspapers in all the cities of the world were
giving pages of space to his marvelous flight. Telegrams of
congratulation swamped him in ten thousand yellow flutters of good
wishes. Crowds surrounded the walls of the American Embassy begging the
"honorable one" but to show himself. Tokio outdid herself to pay him
honor.
"All Japan breathes a welcome to the great flyer of the skies" were the
headlines of a newspaper. And all Japan extended him uncounted
courtesies. There was an endless round of processions and receptions in
his honor. He was introduced to the romance of the symbolic "No" dance,
the dainty tea ceremony, the elaborate Kabuki Drama, fruit of thirty
centuries of culture and tradition. He must see the royal wrestlers, and
the strange sword-dance of old Japan.
On a fete day, he had the tremendous honor of riding the streets of
Tokio in a great, closed, red Rolls-Royce, seated beside His Highness
Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. And seeing the rider of the skypath seated
with their own beloved Son of the Sun, all that Japanese throng kneeled.
Long after the crimson limousine had passed, the crowd still held its
awed position.
For a week, Hal Dane "saw" Japan from sacred Fuiji's mountain crest to
the beautiful, sinister hot lakes of Kannawa.
Then America refused to wait longer for her idol to return. Again the
hordes of telegrams began pouring in.
There was one from Hal Dane's mother, that simply said, "We knew you
could do it--come back to us now."
Vallant, the millionaire giver of aviation prizes, cabled, "You have won
it. Your thirty-five thousand is waiting for you."
From the President of the United States came a radio message, "Your
victory is all victory--a peaceful victory. You have bound nations
together with a bond of friendship."
And still they flooded in--telegrams, cablegrams, radiograms. From the
first, America had gone wild with joy and pride over the matchless
flight. And now with the passing days, America grew frantic, would be no
longer denied. "Come back--You belong to us--America awaits you!" was
the thousandfold message from his homeland.
Under this urge, Hal Dane left sightseeing in Japan to be completed on
some other visit and saw to it that his beloved Wind Bird was carefully
crated for shipment. Then the young Viking of the Sky boarded a great
steamer for another crossing of the Pacific--this time for a journey
straight into the hearts of his own people.