PROGRESS AND A WRECK.
We will leave Frank Armstrong shooting Londonward in the largest
passenger-carrying biplane in the Burtside School for Aviators,
seated on a mere chip of a seat, holding on with a death grip to the
slender upright of seasoned spruce, and turn our attention back to
the morning at Brighton.
Contrary to what Gleason and Frank imagined as they sat in their
disabled motor on the highway some miles outside of Brighton at the
hour their train was scheduled to leave, they were not missed at
first. In the hurry of leaving their temporary training quarters, the
team managers and assistants had so much to do that they left the
business of getting from the hotel to the station, a matter of only
a few hundred yards, to the individuals themselves. No one happened
to notice, as they left the hotel in straggling groups of three and
four, that Armstrong was not with them. At the station half a dozen
compartments on the London train having been reserved in advance,
the athletes tumbled aboard without even a thought of luggage, taking
it for granted, with the usual cheerful carelessness of traveling
athletes, that everything would be all right. Each was concerned only
for himself. It was not to be thought of for a moment that any member
of either team would be so foolish as to get himself left behind.
The ten-thirty on the London and Brighton was the vestibule and
corridor type of train, not like the ordinary single compartment
coach in common use on English and Continental railroads. It was
therefore possible to pass from car to car and from compartment to
compartment on this train much the same as on an American Pullman
train, and visiting between team members shortly began. Trainer
Black, going the rounds, discovered that Armstrong was missing.
At first it was thought that he, with his companion Gleason, had
accidentally gotten into a wrong compartment, but a hasty search from
end to end of the train disclosed the fact that he was not aboard at
all.
"I don't remember having seen him after breakfast," said the Yale
captain. "Could he have gone up to London on the train ahead of us by
any chance?"
"No," returned McGregor, "Armstrong is very conscientious and would
not disobey orders which were explicit enough about this train."
"I'll bet a hat," said Halloby, "that his rattle-headed friend,
Codfish Gleason, took him out for a ride this morning, and that
something went wrong with the power-plant, and they are sitting on
the road somewhere waiting for someone to tow them home."
And, as it proved, Hurdler Halloby wasn't so far out of the way,
excepting that, instead of sitting on the road, they were at that
moment falling with a loud report into the hands of the law. So,
perhaps, it was well that no one on the American team knew their
exact location.
"Come to think of it," said another, "I saw the chap they call
Codfish swing around to the hotel this morning in a red runabout and
a little later saw the runabout going off up the street, but didn't
notice who was in it. But I do know that all three seats were full."
"That's enough," said Black. "Gleason thinks he is the sole and
special guard of Armstrong's health and happiness, and hired that
automobile for the purpose of keeping the jumper's mind occupied with
something besides jumping. I agreed to it myself. Now we lose a man
on account of it."
"Thank goodness," broke in the captain, "we didn't have to depend on
him for an event or we'd have been in a bad way. If he should get to
the grounds in time after all, I'd feel like punishing him by not
allowing him to jump," snapped the captain.
"He's punished already," said Black. "Probably eating his heart out
somewhere. He's the most conscientious fellow I ever saw. It's his
fool friend, the Codfish, who got him into any trouble that he's in."
"I'll telegraph him to come on the next train," said the captain.
"Will not do much good, I guess, the next train wouldn't get him
there in time. But don't worry, he'll be there at those games if he
hasn't met with a serious accident, or I miss my guess badly, but as
for his doing any good, it's another matter."
"It's too bad," growled Captain Harrington. "The papers will throw
the hot shot into us for being careless. It makes us all look like
dummies, confound the luck!"
"Don't worry about it, Captain. You have enough on your hands, and
Vare is a certain winner anyway in Armstrong's event. You have your
own troubles this afternoon in the quarter. So take it easy, and quit
worrying about something that really doesn't matter a great deal as
far as actual results go."
"I'm going to telegraph, just the same," returned the captain, "to
the Grand. They would probably go there when they found we had gone,
eh?"
"Go ahead, it will do no harm," admitted Black.
So Harrington sent off a telegram from a station fifteen miles or so
from London. A bit peremptory the telegram was, but it relieved the
captain's feelings. This was the telegram:
"Frank Armstrong, The Grand, Brighton. Come to London on next train,
take taxi to Queen's Club immediately afterwards. Absolutely no
excuse for missing team train."
But this telegram, as we have seen, never reached the man for whom it
was intended.
At one o'clock taxicabs dropped the Yale-Harvard athletes,
attendants, and trainers at the south gate of Queen's Club. Already
several thousand people had gathered in the stands, and a steady
stream was pouring in the gates, not with the impetuosity that
distinguishes an American crowd, but interested withal in the games
they were shortly to see. The majority of the crowd was, of course,
English, but the Americans made a brave showing. They gathered
together, apparently for mutual support, halfway down the track
stretch and at once selected a cheer leader who was now working up
enthusiasm by an occasional yell, simply to let the enemy know that
young America would be heard from in more ways than one. A surprising
number of Americans had come together for the event. Not all were
Harvard and Yale men, although members of these two institutions
predominated. Students and graduates from universities all over
the United States might have been seen in the crowd. It was not a
Harvard-Yale affair to them, it was America against England, and
everyone from the far side of the Atlantic was there to lend a shout
for his countrymen. College lines were forgotten.
Along the track-side and in the grand stand speculation was rife as
to the outcome of the games. Experts had figured out just how the
various men were to finish, and the figures had been printed in the
morning papers and in the noon editions. All admitted, however, that
the match would be an extremely close one with the chances slightly
in favor of the visitors.
"Well," said one confident young man in the group of Americans,
"we'll take the hundred, two-twenty and both the hurdles. I'd bet my
last dollar on that. These Englishmen can't get their legs moving in
a short distance."
"Ah, yes, but then when it comes to the longer distance we can't keep
our wind going. That's where they have us."
"Oh, I don't know, there's Harrington, the Yale captain, who can
certainly get away with the quarter. He's been doing under fifty
seconds right along. He will give us the fifth event, and all we need
to tie is one more, and to win, two more. Why, Dick, old fel, it's a
cinch."
"And what are the other two events, please, Sir Prophet?"
"Shot for one, they can't beat old red-top McGinnis. These English
chaps never learned how to put a shot anyway, and there's the high
jump, certainly ours; it's like taking money from a baby."
"Sounds like seven wins, the way you have it figured out."
"It is seven places or my training as to what five and two make is
all to the bad. I tell you it's a cinch. I'd put up all my spare cash
on it, and walk home cheerfully if I lost out. But, pshaw! we can't
lose!"
Conversation was checked by the appearance of several athletes
who had emerged from the Club locker-room doorway, and who were
walking across the turfed stretch to the track. They were seen to
be Americans, and a ringing shout went up from their supporters
which brought smiles to the faces of the young athletes. The English
spectators applauded the Americans with hand-clapping. By twos and
threes the athletes made their appearance on the track before the
hour set for the beginning of the games, for the day was bright and
warm and the sun of more advantage to them than the shade and cool of
the training quarters.
It is not our purpose to narrate in detail the doings of the half
hundred athletes who struggled for the honor of their colleges and
country that afternoon nor how records fell and predictions of
experts were set at naught, how the balance swung this way and that,
how the mercurial American cheer-leader ruined the throats of his
countrymen for the encouragement of the team striving desperately
on field and track. We are more intimately concerned with Frank
Armstrong whom we left a thousand feet more or less in the air,
taking a last desperate chance to be in at the finish on the Queen's
Club track.
Frank afterwards said that he experienced no fear of any kind as the
flying machine glided upward from the earth. At first there was the
sensation of great speed, though the machine was comparatively close
to the ground, but as the height increased that sensation diminished.
Instead of the machine seeming to rise, the earth seemed to drop away
leaving the machine stationary. Below, the country revealed itself
like a map, with the highways and lanes standing out sharply. To the
south he got the glint of the English Channel, and to the north was
a great black smudge which he took to be London with its smoke from
tens of thousands of chimneys.
"Going higher," shouted Butler. "Bad currents down here." The words
came faintly to Frank through the roaring of the wind and the sharp
crackle of the engine exhaust. The plane plunged and rocked in an air
billow.
"Go ahead as far as you want to," shouted Frank, "but get me there."
He had lost all sensation of fear and almost of interest in the
flight. His mind was on Queen's Club. Steadily the machine climbed
until the green of the trees and the grass all became as one, and
the red tiles of the roofs showed only as a splash of color among
the vast expanse of green. At the greater height of perhaps two
thousand feet, where Butler found better currents, Frank thought the
country below seemed more than ever like a map in one of his old
school geographies. Twenty towns and cities lay within the range of
his vision and, by turning his head slightly, he could distinguish,
across the whole width of the Channel, the dim outlines of the shores
of France.
The motor of the big biplane, which had been running with the
precision of a well-timed clock for the space of half an hour, began
to give evidence of something wrong with its internals. It skipped,
stuttered in its rhythm for a moment and then went on, only to repeat
in a moment. The aviator, helpless in this emergency, merely jiggled
his spark lever, but the stuttering of the motor continued, and then
with a most disconcerting suddenness the motor stopped entirely.
"We've got to come down," shouted Butler, "but I'll make our fall as
long as possible. Hold tight."
Frank needed no urging. He felt the death of the steady forward
movement and the grip of gravity as the biplane began to drop with
incredible swiftness toward the earth. But it was a drop which was
controlled by the cool-headed Butler, and every foot of the drop took
them nearer to their destination.
Five hundred feet below, Frank saw a little patch of green field
entirely free from trees or shrubbery, and to this he rightly
guessed the aviator was heading. It looked like a golf course from
that height, and, indeed, proved to be. Now they were directly over
the haven which Butler had picked out, and it seemed in a fair way
to pass it, when the flyer banked hard to the left, almost pivoted
on his left wing, brought the machine around over the golf links
again and, with a final swooping spiral came to earth with a shock
sufficiently hard to snap off at the hub one of the wheels of the
biplane's running gear.