ARRIVAL OF A STRANGER
Not always, and in fact seldom, are things so important and unusual as a
Transatlantic aerial flight, to be carried out strictly according to
prearranged plans and schedule.
Long before the final details of this great expedition had been decided
upon, careful students of flying had foreseen that preliminary to the
establishment of that method of transport as one of the dependable arts
of commerce, the study of the air, the weather, and atmospheric
conditions generally, would have to advance farther than it ever has
thus far, and that upon that knowledge aeroplanes and dirigibles in
passenger and freight service would be operated upon schedules almost as
regular as those of our railroads and steamship lines today; more like
the latter, however, in that seasonal conditions would largely govern
arrivals and departures.
In other words, that the study of atmospheric conditions would make it
possible to know, from the average that had obtained over, say, a
period of five or ten years, about what sort of weather might be
expected to prevail at every important flight point, or over every
regular flying route, throughout every part of the year.
Such a study, so far as it had been possible to advance it, had been
made prior to the present proposed flight, and the schedule was arranged
for what was believed would be the most propitious time in the year,
both for the start and for the conditions expected to be encountered
once the planes had left sight of America and had started upon the long,
perilous and uncharted course across the Atlantic Ocean.
But alas, as the poet said, for "the best-laid plans of mice and men."
Contrary to every plan and calculation, in direct opposition to every
hope and prediction, it had rained with only occasional and brief
interruptions for the greater part of three days and three nights, and
now, on this, the morning of the fifth day since the crews had arrived
at Halifax, the first promise of better weather was held forth in a
stiff breeze that was blowing from the northwest.
And as well may be imagined, this first sign of relief had not come too
soon. As a matter of fact, a blue funk had prevailed over the entire
camp ever since the storm had set in. It hadn't been so bad at first,
when there were a hundred and one things that each crew could find to do
in the way of big and little details looking to increased speed,
efficiency and safety throughout the trip.
But when each man of each crew finally had to admit his imagination
exhausted in finding such work with which to pass the time, then came
the long, slow, nerve-racking, patience-killing, disposition-spoiling
wait, in which they could only attempt to console one another with
predictions of an early clearing, in which they only half believed
themselves.
Checkers, chess, and improvised shuffleboard and hand-ball had been
resorted to, even to the extent of a checker tournament in which every
crew had its entry and Dave Bemis, of the Falcon outfit, had carried off
the camp honors and the admitted championship.
But, faced with the responsibilities of succeeding in a non-stop ocean
flight of approximately two thousand miles, these were small and
ineffective diversions, and in the indoor games many a man had made his
moves mechanically and abstractedly, giving proof to the old saying
that he was, mentally at least, "up in the air."
Now, under the most favorable conditions, it was bound to be two or
three days longer before the flight could start, but there was at least
the encouragement that it was a definite prospect.
"Say, fellows," said Andy Flures, entering their hangar after the fifth
weather survey he had made in the last hour, "I'll tell you what let's
do. There isn't another tap of work of any sort that I know of that can
be put on our plane, and we've still got a lot of time on our hands.
What do you say if we try to get some of the others together for some
field sports--running, jumping, pole vault and track--regular
old-fashioned all-round contest like we used to have at Brighton?"
"Andy, you're a wonder," ejaculated Fred Bentner, immediately
enthusiastic. "Why, it's just what we need to limber up our muscles and
put new ginger into us. We've been sitting around moping too long
already."
"Yes," agreed Big Jack, "if by some chance or accident it should develop
that we should start upon the flight today we're in no mental condition
for it. Our minds are groggy. We've sort of gone sour. We want to limber
up our joints, as Fred says, and at the same time get our grouches out
of our systems. Nothing like a real athletic contest for that."
"I'm with you heart and soul," echoed Donald Harlan. "Let's sound the
others out right away."
And then and there they appointed each other committees of one to visit
the other crews to get the thing started.
Half an hour later a score of young men, ruddy of complexion, clear of
eye, supple of action, men who did not know the meaning of physical
fear, were gathered together in the spirit of schoolboys on the big
field that fronted the giant hangars in which were stored the powerful
machines that soon were to vie with each other, even as now their pilots
and mechanics were about to do, in a historical contest of the air.
By unanimous agreement Dr. Charles P. Vorhees, now a sedate and
high-salaried official in Uncle Sam's Weather Bureau, but a few years
ago a well-known athletic star at Yale, was made referee of the
contests. His own reputation in athletics had been such as to preclude
even a suspicion of partisanship or favoritism in his decisions, and
further than that he was personally popular with every air-man there.
"Let's make at least part of this contest different from the average,"
suggested Dr. Vorhees, as the men gathered about to hear his
suggestions. "Men in your line of work expect and even seek the unusual,
rather than the ordinary. You get your thrills out of doing new things.
Very well, then, instead of trying to lay out a track over the driest
parts of the field, let's select a course over the soggiest sections,
and then have a race with some real difficulties in it."
"Sure; just the thing," came half a dozen voices in unison.
And then the brilliant mind of Archie Brown, of the Falcon crew, added
another novel thought.
"Why not do it on snowshoes?" he offered. "The going is heavy enough,
and that ought to help make it unusual."
"Gee! Snowshoeing in the mud! Corking idea!"
The chorus of approval left no doubt that in this aggregation no task
was regarded as really hard, no difficulty as insurmountable.
"But where would we get the snowshoes?" asked Dr. Vorhees, shaking with
laughter as he surveyed the heavily mudded field, and already seeing in
prospect the ludicrous probabilities of such a contest as Brown had
suggested.
"Leave it to me," the latter replied. "It was having seen twenty or
thirty pairs only last night that brought the thing to my mind."
He trotted off across the field, to where a bleak building stood out
uninvitingly against the horizon. It was the general storehouse of the
coast guard station at that point, and was in charge of the ex-whaling
captain with whom Big Jack Carew had discussed Newfoundland weather
conditions on his first morning there. And the former whaler, it proved,
was as good a sport as he was skipper.
"Would he lend Archie Brown the twenty pairs of snowshoes which that
youth had seen stowed away there one day while he was holding a lengthy
conversation with the old salt?"
Of course, the question wasn't put or repeated in just that language,
but that was its full purport. Would he? Well, the genial sailor of the
northern seas rubbed his stubbled chin for a moment, listened while
Archie outlined in detail the purpose for which the shoes were desired,
wrinkled his brow, shifted his "chaw" from the right cheek to the left,
squinted out to where the foregathered flyers awaited his decision--and
then he offered a sort of compromise. He would lend the shoes, providing
he was permitted to lay out the course. No particular reason, of course.
Oh, no! Just wanted to sort of have a hand in the thing, so to speak.
Well, he did. He had a hand in it, and, as it developed later, the
others were in with both feet. But that's getting ahead too rapidly.
With the captain following more slowly, Archie raced across the field to
inform the others of the condition under which the snowshoes had been
loaned. In a jiffy they agreed that certainly they would grant an
ancient mariner's small whim like that. Why not? Anyway, it was
necessary, in order to get the shoes.
And so, when the erstwhile whaler joined the group, he immediately was
informed by Dr. Vorhees that they waited upon him, as an honored and
informed native, to indicate a foot-race course over which some eager
young men, equipped with snowshoes, might, perhaps, encounter some
difficulties to add zest to the friendly encounter.
"Seein's ye cain't hev the shoes 'nless ye meet thet condition, I'm not
going to be perticerly het up about th' honor yer conferin'," answered
the weather-beaten old salt callously. "But I thenk ye, nevertheless."
He stepped to the front of the group, so that they formed a semicircle
about him.
"See thet old stump of a tree stickin' up out thar?" he asked,
indicating with outstretched right arm the distant skeleton of what once
had been a towering cedar.
"Yes," answered half a dozen, following the direction in which he
pointed, almost due east.
"Wall, then," the old captain continued, "we'll consider the course a
straight line to thet 'ere stump, and then, roundin' that, straight off
to thet other healthier tree up thar," indicating a point fully three
hundred yards north of the dead cedar, "and then straight back here."
The twenty young men began lacing on the snowshoes which Archie and the
captain had brought with them.
"Ye can make any other conditions ye want," the latter added, "but if
I'm not mistaken thet'll take ye some time--an' prove yer mettle."
It was not until later that they realized why he chuckled so after
making this final remark. They went ahead with their preparations. Some
of the youths had had considerable experience in snowshoeing; others had
never had a pair upon their feet. It is safe to say, however, that none
of them ever set out upon such a trip with them before.
As they stood in line ready for the start, the old whaling captain
uttered his final admonition. "Around thet old stump, remember, and from
there up to thet big tree, then home. An' remember thet old rule of
'rithmetic--the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Straight from thet stump to the tree." He looked at Dr. Vorhees, gave a
sly wink which none but that individual saw, and a moment later the
lumbering men were off.
For the first five minutes the going was not hard, although for the
inexperienced there were unsuspected difficulties and time after time
one or another of them, placing the desire for speed above caution, got
suddenly stuck, and then of natural momentum went headlong into the mud,
at the same time experiencing sudden and disconcerting stretching and
straining of the muscles and tendons of their legs.
In the next ten minutes it became a straggling line, with the more
expert in the lead, the novices laboring along with many a grunt of
surprise and disgust, but all staying gamely in the contest, in spite of
all the unexpected handicaps it developed.
But as the three leaders in the race reached and rounded the old stump
they became suddenly and painfully aware of the trick which the shrewd
old whaler had played upon them. These leaders were Big Jack Carew, the
unpopular Henryson, and a navigator named George Boardman. Behind them
the long and irregularly progressing line was a ludicrous manifestation
of human determination and endeavor, under the most unexpected forms of
surprises and handicaps; for the course, even over its first leg, was
not merely a stretch of muddy field, but an uninterrupted succession of
treacherous hidden bogs and marshes, whose surfaces were apparently but
patches of juicy mud.
Around the stump, however, the character of the course became even
worse, and it wasn't long before those in the lead realized that they
were in reality treading the bed, or rather channel, of a
recently-formed miniature creek.
"No fool, that fellow," growled Boardman, puffing laboriously to
extricate one foot that seemed to be drawn down into the ground with the
tenacious pull and grip of a suction pump. "He's got the laugh on us all
right."
"Who-o-r-rp!" Henryson, a little in the lead, turning for an instant to
make a reply, had miscalculated grievously, and now, a victim of his own
folly in having even for a second taken his eyes from his course, was
lying face downward in a morass of slimy mud, his arms working like the
paddle wheels of a ferryboat.
There was a shout of derisive laughter from behind, as there had been
every time any one had, as Donald expressed it, "bitten the dust." But
Henryson, naturally a poor sport and sour-natured, was doubly angered
and chagrined not alone by the stagnant depths into which his unhappy
disaster had precipitated him, but also by the fact that he had lost the
lead and at least three others were now ahead of him. It was left to
happy Andy Flures to reap the full measure of the Norwegian's wrath.
Three times Andy himself had been down in the mud, but each time he had
come up smiling and more determined than ever to finish the race.
"Why the tail-dip?" he asked of Henryson as he came up; and there was
another gale of laughter.
Henryson's color rose and showed through pink, even under his facial
covering of mire. He muttered something under his breath, and then,
instead of being cooled by that brief outlet to his anger, completely
lost control of himself.
He suddenly bent forward, as though to tighten his shoe, grasped a
handful of mud, and before Andy could realize his intention or even
shield himself from it, Henryson hurled it, striking Flures squarely in
the face.
There was a gasp from the men behind, and a shout of anger from the old
whaling captain. Involuntarily everyone came to a halt.
Like most good-natured people, Andy Flures was not a man to be insulted
in that way. With dangerous calm and precision he removed the plastered
mud from his eyes, and then, never wavering, but without undue haste,
stalked over to where Henryson stood. And before that individual was
aware of what was happening to him, Andy grabbed him in an iron grip,
turned him upside down as though Henryson weighed no more than a doll,
and then, with a tremendous lunge, planted him head-first into the
slime, up to his shoulders.
It seemed a full minute he stood thus, his feet threshing the air,
before he sufficiently unbalanced to fall of his own weight.
When Henryson had finally regained his feet and could see and hear, the
old whaling captain was standing in front of him. The others, including
Andy, at his signal, were continuing over the designated course, but all
could hear him as he bawled out at the Norwegian:
"Young man, take off them shoes."
Without a word Henryson began to do as he was bidden.
"Now lissen here," the old whaler continued, as Henryson handed him the
snowshoes that had been the cause of his misfortune and such a nasty
display of humor. "When I laid out this course it was my idea to see a
little fun. I knew it would be soggy goin', but I thought I was dealin'
with sportsmen, and I was--all except you. You're my idea of a
no-account, that's what you are."
Before this tirade from a man nearly thrice his age Henryson stood
abashed.
"And one thing more," the old seaman continued. "There was once a man
named Shakespeare, that it might surprise you to know I ever heard of.
Well, around here I'm what he called 'clothed with a little brief
authority.' I'm the constabule. I'm not het up about it, but I want to
tell ye this: you get the slightest bit gay around this harbor and I'll
run ye into the calaboose so quick ye won't know what happened to ye.
And ye won't be out in time to make eny flight to Europe, either; though
if ye ever git there I hope ye stay."
Henryson, a lone and ostracized man, stalked across the field just as
Big Jack Carew, laughing and puffing, came in a winner, twenty yards
ahead of the next nearest man.
Thereafter there were broad-jumps, high-jumps, pole-vault contests and
many other tryouts in athletic skill, but it remained for Fred Bentner
to show them something in the way of novelty in almost monkey-like
agility.
There stood at the upper end of the big field two strong, permanent
upright posts, with a horizontal bar fastened to them about eight feet
above the ground. At one time it had been used for the purposes of
winding cable. Jumping and catching this lateral bar, Fred began
twirling about it with such speed that his body looked most like the
rapidly-revolving blade of a propeller.
Then, when he was going so rapidly that it did not seem that he possibly
could know his exact and instantaneous position, he suddenly let go,
and, to the gasps of the men who were looking on, shot off through the
air at a horizontal tangent.
Swift as an arrow his body hurtled through space. Thirty feet away he
landed, feet up, as though he had taken but an ordinary broad-jump.
"Bravo!" came surprised and wondering shouts.
"Measure it," said Fred, quietly, joining the others.
They did. "Thirty-three feet," announced Dr. Vorhees, "and I'd call it
some stunt."
It was nearing sunset when the final contests of this novel field day
were brought to a conclusion, but every man who had participated in it,
with the exception of Henryson, felt a hundredfold better for the
physical exertions they had been through. It proved to be a mental as
well as a physical tonic.
But final events, as proved later, turned out to be most significant.
It was long after dark when the four young men, returning to their hut
from that of another crew, were brought to a sudden halt a hundred feet
away from their own hangar.
"What's that?" Big Jack had whispered, at the same time attracting the
attention of the other three to a form barely discernible in the night,
as it skulked along in the dense shadow of the big building.
"It's a man, and apparently bent on no good," said Andy Flures, at the
same time starting for the hangar on a run, followed closely by the
others.
But they were too late. The intruder, whoever he was and whatever his
errand, had discovered them at the same time they had seen him and had
made his escape in the night. They searched for fifteen minutes, but in
vain. They went inside, and found everything apparently exactly as they
had left it.
"Well, that's a queer one," said Big Jack, as they sat around discussing
it before retiring. "The fellow might have meant no harm at all, but
we're at least on our guard against any trickery."
"Yes," agreed Don, "and for one I'm in favor of going over every inch of
our plane tomorrow."
And with that excellent precaution agreed upon, they went to bed.