Transcriber’s Note
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[Illustration: THE DART AROSE ON A SPLENDID ARROW COURSE. Ben Hardy’s
Flying Machine Page 143]
BEN HARDY’S FLYING
MACHINE
Or
Making a Record for Himself
BY
FRANK V. WEBSTER
AUTHOR OF “ONLY A FARM BOY,” “AIRSHIP ANDY,” “TOM
THE TELEPHONE BOY,” “THE YOUNG TREASURE
HUNTER,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
BOOKS FOR BOYS
By FRANK V. WEBSTER
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
ONLY A FARM BOY
TOM, THE TELEPHONE BOY
THE BOY FROM THE RANCH
THE YOUNG TREASURE HUNTER
BOB, THE CASTAWAY
THE YOUNG FIREMEN OF LAKEVILLE
THE NEWSBOY PARTNERS
THE BOY PILOT OF THE LAKES
TWO BOY GOLD MINERS
JACK, THE RUNAWAY
COMRADES OF THE SADDLE
THE BOYS OF BELLWOOD SCHOOL
THE HIGH SCHOOL RIVALS
AIRSHIP ANDY
BOB CHESTER’S GRIT
BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE
DICK, THE BANK BOY
DARRY, THE LIFE SAVER
_Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York_
Copyright, 1911, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “NOBLY REWARDED!” 1
II. JUST IN TIME 10
III. A NEW FRIEND 17
IV. THE “SYBILLINE” WHISTLE 29
V. FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS 37
VI. THE AIRSHIP IDEA 45
VII. MYSTERY 53
VIII. AT THE AERO MEET 60
IX. A BOMB-DROPPING EVENT 67
X. A RUSH ORDER 74
XI. THE DART 82
XII. A SERIOUS CHARGE 88
XIII. THE MAN IN THE GIG 96
XIV. THE MYSTERIOUS PIN 102
XV. A MEAN ENEMY 108
XVI. STEALING AN INVENTION 115
XVII. ON TIME 121
XVIII. THE FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR PRIZE 128
XIX. “GO!” 135
XX. CRUSOES OF THE AIR 144
XXI. A FIGHT WITH A BEAR 151
XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED 157
XXIII. THE LOST AVIATOR 163
XXIV. HOMEWARD BOUND 170
XXV. CONCLUSION 191
BEN HARDY’S FLYING MACHINE
CHAPTER I
“NOBLY REWARDED!”
“Take care—that engine is going to run wild!”
Those words, yelled out by a brawny mechanic, announced a moment of
excitement in the Saxton Automobile Works, the home of the celebrated
Estrelle machine.
The big steam engine of the plant had slipped the belt. There was a
jar and then a crash. Then the big driving wheel of the engine began
speeding like an uncontrollable monster. Clouds of steam covered the
boiler room like a snow bank. The machine shop gearing snapped and
vibrated, and the building began to shake from end to end.
One big man with a shout of dismay ran for the front of the shop,
and disappeared through its doorway into the street. This was Jasper
Saxton, the owner of the establishment. His example was followed by
several of the clerks in the glass-partitioned office at the front of
the building. Most of the twenty odd machinists in the shop, however,
stuck to their posts.
“Danger—look out!” shouted old Caleb Dunn, the foreman.
Every man at a lathe immediately slipped the belt of his special
machine. Those at the further end of the shop did not attempt this.
They dodged and ran away from their posts of duty.
There was a reason for this. One end of the big shaft nearest the
engine had dropped. The jar of the engine had either broken a
connection of the shaft or it had slipped a bearing. At all events,
the shaft had taken a sidelong swing and had struck the floor,
reducing a plank to splinters. There it turned, wobbled about and
slammed up and down, smashing everything that came in its way.
“Do something, men!” shouted Martin Hardy, head machinist of the auto
works.
As he spoke Mr. Hardy started on a run for the rear of the machine
shop, but he was anticipated. His son, Ben Hardy, had arrived on the
scene just in time to take part in the thrilling event of the moment.
It was after school hours, and Ben always had free run of the plant.
His father was an expert in his line and an old and valued employee,
and his son, with his cheerful, accommodating ways, was always a
welcome visitor with the workmen, with whom he was a general favorite.
Ben was familiar with every turn and corner of the shop. In a flash
his eye took in the unusual situation as it presented itself. He
guessed out the cause of the commotion intuitively.
“Don’t go, father!” he cried, seizing his father’s arm and detaining
him. “I know the way.”
Ben did, indeed, know the way. A sliding iron door separated the
engine room from the machine shop. Above it was an open space,
and through this the steam was pouring. Ben knew that it was many
chances against one that the iron door was caught on the other side.
Besides this, the wobbling shaft piece was still threshing about,
a formidable barrier, although the power was dying down as the
connecting dismantled shafts revolved less rapidly.
In a far corner of the machine shop there was a sashless window
frame. Through it Ben had clambered many a time. It was used for
ventilation. It opened upon the roof of a small brick oven which was
used to bake the sand cores used in the molding flasks.
Ben leaped through the aperture and landed on the roof in a second.
Beyond it rolled the iron drum which ground the fine charcoal for the
dust bags employed in drying the wet sand in the molding frames. This
Ben cleared at a bound.
He heard a timber fall in the machine shop, and there was an ominous
quaking of the staunch timbers all over the place as his feet landed
on the hard cindered floor of the boiler room.
“Where is Shallock, the engineer, all this time?” murmured Ben,
and running alongside of the boiler he discovered that the man was
mysteriously missing from his post at a critical moment.
Through the clouds of steam fast escaping from the overheated boiler
Ben made out the engineer. He knew Tom Shallock well, and was not
astonished at his present condition. He knew the son of the engineer,
Dave Shallock, still better. Ben had no reason to feel particularly
friendly towards either, but he sought honestly to save the engineer
from the loss of his position and disgrace.
Shallock sat huddled back in the big heavy armchair in which he
rested between spells of alternate duty to engine and boiler. He was
his own fireman, and his chair was directly in front of the furnace
door. Ben ran at him and shook him forcibly by the arm, with the
urgent words shouted into his ear:
“Wake up, Mr. Shallock, there’s trouble!”
But the engineer simply grunted in an incoherent way, and a
half-filled bottle that had slipped from his hand to the floor told
the whole miserable story.
Ben darted past the helpless man and ran down two stone steps to the
engine pit. It was well that he was a boy who noticed things and
usually kept his bearings well in mind, for he had to grope his way.
A thrill of gladness ran through his frame as his hand finally rested
on the valve wheel. Two turns, and Ben drew back gasping for breath
and reeking with perspiration. The whiz of the great driving wheel
lessened, the governor slowed down to a stop. Returning to the boiler
room, Ben set the escape valve on the boiler and knew that he had
saved the day.
Some men came running in from the molding room. One of them went to
the iron door and unset its latch and rolled it open, for some one
was hammering vigorously on it on the other side. It was Mr. Hardy.
“Rouse him up, quick,” spoke Ben to one of the molders, and with a
motion of his foot he kicked the tell-tale liquor flask towards the
ash pit.
The man laughed, winked, and with the aid of a comrade dragged the
engineer to his feet. By this time Mr. Hardy had reached the spot.
Pressing past him, the foreman faced the blinking engineer sternly.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Faugh!” as he caught a
whiff of the engineer’s breath—“at the old trick again, eh?”
“Steam overcame me,” stammered Shallock.
The shop foreman turned to Ben.
“Did you do that?” he inquired in his sharp, crisp way, waving his
hand towards the engine.
“I shut off the power—yes, sir,” replied Ben.
“What was this man doing?”
Ben hesitated and flushed up. He did not wish to tell on anybody,
much less a person who disliked him and would be sure to ascribe any
“peaching” to spite.
“You needn’t answer,” suddenly spoke the foreman, his keen eye
catching sight of the bottle, and picking it up. “Get out of here,
you,” he added disgustedly, giving the engineer a shove towards the
door.
“Look here, Mr. Dunn——”
“You get!” reiterated the foreman.
Shallock began to snivel.
“See here, you may be sick yourself some time,” he declared in a
maudlin tone.
“Sick!” repeated the foreman contemptuously.
“I’ve run my engine two years——”
“It isn’t your engine any more,” observed the foreman. “One of you
men go for Pete Doty,” he continued to the group from the molding
room. “He’s out of a job, and he can have this one if he qualifies
right. That’s all,” added Dunn, with a peremptory wave of his hand.
The signal was understood promptly by all hands to get back to their
respective places. Mr. Hardy moved over to the side of Ben. He placed
a hand on his son’s head and his eyes were full of emotion.
“I am proud of you, my son,” he said simply.
“You ain’t the only one,” broke in Dunn, brusquely brushing Mr.
Hardy aside and catching Ben’s arm in his iron grip. “You come with
me, boy.”
He was a resolute hustling piece of humanity, always doing things
forcefully. With a rush he dragged Ben into and through the machine
shop.
“Good boy!” spoke a machinist, patting Ben on the shoulder as he
passed him.
“You did it grand, lad,” commended a second.
“Three cheers for Ben Hardy!” roared Tim Grogan, a jolly and
independent apprentice.
The enthusiastic cheers, given with a will, died away as the foreman
and Ben reached the office.
“Where’s Saxton?” demanded Dunn in his bluff off-handed way.
“He went outside the building,” explained the bookkeeper, who had
suspended work and looked anxious and flustered. “Say, is the danger
over?”
“Oh, maybe a few shingles shaken off the roof. I reckon Saxton went
outside to see how many,” retorted the foreman sarcastically. “Here
he comes.”
The portly proprietor of the works at that moment came strutting
through the front doorway. He was very consequential, now that the
peril was past.
“Here Mr. Saxton,” spoke the foreman, “—you know this boy?”
“It’s Hardy’s lad, isn’t it?” replied Jasper Saxton, with a stare at
Ben.
“Yes. He’s saved your shop from rattling to pieces, that’s all,”
announced the foreman bluntly. “That pet of yours, Tom Shallock, was
in liquor and asleep at his post. If Ben here hadn’t got in action
there’d have been a long shut-down of the Saxton Automobile Works, I
can tell you, and maybe some funerals.”
Saxton looked annoyed and angry at the reference to the engineer,
and slightly bored at the determined way in which his foreman kept
pushing Ben to the front. All this embarrassed the latter, who tried
to wriggle free from the grasp of the foreman.
“Where is Shallock?” asked Mr. Saxton uneasily.
“Fired,” tersely reported the foreman.
“Why—I—that is——” stammered Mr. Saxton.
“You act as if you were afraid of that man, Mr. Saxton,” observed the
foreman bluntly. “I’ve sent for Pete Doty. He’ll be here directly.
About this boy, now——”
“Yes, yes,” nodded Mr. Saxton hurriedly. “Good boy. First-class
father, too. Shake hands. Glad. Thank you.”
“Hold on, Mr. Saxton,” interrupted the foreman, as his employer
started to close the incident by entering the office of the works.
“What are you going to do for young Hardy?”
“Do—eh. Ah. I see. Come into the office, Hardy.”
Ben obeyed the order. Mr. Saxton looked nettled, and Ben felt
dreadfully conscious. The former put his hands in a pocket and drew
out a roll of bills. These he promptly transferred to another
pocket. He next fished out a dollar, glanced at it, then at Ben, went
over to a desk, drew out a money draw and changed the large silver
coin.
He pocketed three quarters and handed the other twenty-five cent
piece to Ben.
“Oh, no,” dissented Ben, drawing back. “There is no need of that, Mr.
Saxton.”
“I insist,” said Mr. Saxton grandly. “You’ve done quite a big thing,
Hardy, and you deserve the reward.”