BUFFETED BY THE GALE
“You mean the _Shooting Star_?” asked Joe, breathlessly.
“Yes,” was the reply. “And she’s sending out radio messages. I
caught one just now. She’s fighting the storm somewhere up in this
section of the State.”
Bob rushed to the window and threw it open. The rain blew in
fiercely, but he did not mind that as he lifted his face upward and
scanned the skies.
Against the lowering clouds he could at first see nothing. Then his
eyes discerned what seemed to him a long cigar-shaped object
hovering a few hundred feet above the earth.
He dashed the raindrops from his eyes and looked again. This time
the shape seemed to be nearer, and he could see more clearly.
“I think I see it!” he cried, and his comrades and the captain
crowded about him to get a look.
“That’s it!” proclaimed the captain. “I saw her more than once while
she was making her trial tests. But I can just see the stern now.
She’s passing directly over the house.”
“Let’s go to the attic!” cried Joe. “We can see through the
skylight.”
They all hurried up the stairs, and through the skylight could
plainly see the mammoth airship, which was now so close that she
could be discerned very distinctly.
“She’s dangerously close!” cried the captain. “Closer to the ground
than her pilot knows. He ought to be told. But you have only a
receiving set.”
“I’ll ’phone to Doctor Dale,” cried Bob. “He has a strong
transmitter, and knows how to use it.”
He rushed downstairs and got Doctor Dale on the telephone. The
latter’s quick intelligence grasped the situation instantly.
“I’ll notify her,” he said. “Hold the wire.”
A moment later a shout came from Joe.
“She’s rising!” he cried. “She must have got the doctor’s message.
She’s heading toward the southeast.”
Two minutes later Doctor Dale’s voice came over the wire.
“I warned her,” he said. “And I’ve just got this answer:
“‘Clintonia. Thanks for message. Are getting her under control. All
well on board. No fatal damage to the craft. Are confident of riding
the gale and taking her home.’”
Bob thanked the doctor, ran upstairs, and reported.
“There spoke the spirit of the United States Navy airmen!” exclaimed
the captain, with justifiable pride in his arm of the service.
They watched the great dirigible, as she tacked and slanted,
jockeying to take advantage of the gale, and finally disappeared in
the darkness. Then, still quivering with excitement, they retraced
their way down the stairs.
“Another victory for radio!” exclaimed Bob. “Perhaps that message
saved her from destruction.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied the captain. “She was certainly nearer
the ground than she meant to be or thought she was. At that rate of
descent, she might have struck the earth in two minutes more. And
then what might have happened to the airship and her crew I don’t
care to think about. No doubt she’s got other messages, too, tonight
at various places that have helped her to escape disaster.”
“I wonder how she got adrift,” remarked Jimmy. “I thought that she
was enclosed in a hangar.”
“She has been until recently,” explained the captain. “But a short
time ago she was taken from the hangar and fastened to a high
mooring mast, to which she was secured by cables, and where she
floated at right angles to the mast. You see, it required the
services of about three hundred men to get her in and out of her
hangar, and that took a lot of time and work, besides which there
was always the danger of injury to her envelope in getting her in
and out. Now, with the mooring mast, she needs the services of only
about three officers and fifteen men.”
“How do you suppose she got loose?” queried Herb.
“I suppose a terrific blast of wind tore her from her moorings,”
conjectured the visitor. “You see, with her six hundred feet and
more of length, she presents an enormous surface to the wind.
Perhaps her cables weren’t strong enough to stand the strain. We’ll
read all about it in tomorrow’s papers. But now I think of it, we
won’t have to wait that long. The air must be full of messages now,
telling all about it. I’ll see what I can catch.”
He resumed the earphones, and the boys listened eagerly as from time
to time he repeated what he could pick up from the air. This was
necessarily fragmentary and disjointed, but they could piece the
bits together well enough to make up a fairly complete story of what
had happened.
It appeared that the sudden storm had caught the airship when it had
on board a crew of twenty-one men. Luckily, these had included the
pilot, a man of great technical skill, as well as of coolness and
courage. All accounts agreed that in the great emergency all on
board had carried themselves in a way to make their countrymen proud
of them.
Disaster had threatened the craft at the very beginning. The blast
that snapped the cables had driven the ship close to the ground. She
was within a few feet of it when she let go her water ballast, and,
with the resulting buoyancy, was able to rise to a safer height.
But up there the wind drove her with resistless force until she was
more than sixty miles inland. How badly she had been hurt, no one of
her crew at that time fully knew. It developed later that a big hole
had been torn in her prow, where it had been ripped from the cable,
and that a long strip of her envelope had been peeled away. But,
regardless of what might be coming to them, the pilot and the crew
kept their heads, and in an exhibition of the finest kind of
airmen’s skill held their craft in hand.
It was only after the captain felt sure that the airship was well on
her way to her hangar that he laid the earphones aside, with a sigh
of relief that was echoed by the Radio Boys.
“Well, that’s over,” the visitor remarked. “The _Shooting Star_ may
be wounded, but she’s still afloat, thank heaven.”
“She must have felt lonely tonight, for there weren’t any other
stars to be seen,” remarked Joe.
“That’s a fact,” admitted the captain, with a smile. “But perhaps
before long her crew will have a sight of the stars farther north.
That is, if she makes her projected flight to the North Pole.”
“I’ve heard she was going to try to make that trip,” put in Bob.
“Perhaps this accident will put a crimp in it.”
“I hardly think so,” affirmed the captain. “Probably she isn’t so
badly hurt that she can’t be repaired in a month or two.”
“What’s the idea of going to the Pole, anyway?” asked Joe. “It seems
to me like taking an awful lot of risk for a very slight advantage.
Peary’s been to the Pole, anyway.”
“True enough,” assented Captain Springer. “I don’t understand that
the Government in any way questions the correctness of Peary’s
account or the fact of his discovery. But, as the Secretary of the
Navy said the other day, there is a vast unexplored area in the
vicinity of the Pole that is a constant challenge to the United
States. If we don’t discover and map it, some other Government will,
and he wants the glory to come to this country.
“Much of this area is supposed to be land. We have a stake in it
because of its nearness to Alaska, our farthest outlying possession.
The trip, too, would probably result in scientific discoveries of
the highest value. And whatever land might be discovered may be
ultimately of advantage to this country for strategic, as well as
other, purposes. In the days of sea traveling, that land, if it
exists, was inaccessible. But in these days of airplanes and
dirigibles and radio, communication might be easily established and
maintained.”
“It will be a mighty long trip, as well as a cold one,” mused Bob.
“It will be all that,” agreed Captain Springer. “It is proposed to
have the _Shooting Star_ cruise over a million square miles of
unexplored territory. It is planned that she will first go to San
Diego and Seattle on the Pacific Coast and then to Nome, Alaska. At
Nome there will be waiting for her a naval vessel with a mooring
mast. There the airship will be moored while she is supplied with
fuel and provisions. From Nome to the North Pole is about one
thousand five hundred miles. She may go over the Pole and from there
to Spitzbergen, about six hundred miles farther on, and then return
by way of England to the United States.”
“Some trip!” exclaimed Joe.
“She’s already made longer trips,” replied the captain. “She made
one continuous trip to St. Louis and back, a distance of about two
thousand five hundred miles. The trip from Nome over the Pole to
Spitzbergen would be only two thousand one hundred miles.”
“But though the trip is shorter, it’s more risky,” objected Jimmy.
“If she’d had to come down in this country, she’d still have been in
a civilized land. Up there there will be nothing but ice and seals
and bears, and maybe a few Eskimos.”
“Of course there are greater risks,” conceded the captain, “just as
there are greater dangers in flying over water than over land. But
risks are like food to the men of the service. They just eat them
up. Then, too, the _Shooting Star_ will have a radio set on board
that can transmit more than a thousand miles. And the supply boat at
Nome will have three airplanes equipped with skis for landing on
ice, water, snow and land. They’d hurry to the airship’s help if she
radioed for any. They have a cruising radius of two thousand miles.”
“Suppose the airship had to come down on the ice?” inquired Bob.
“How would they be able to handle her, if even now it requires three
or four hundred men to hold her when she lands on the ground?”
“She’s having a special anchor made now for holding her in snow or
ice,” was the reply.
“Suppose she runs short of gas?” queried Jimmy.
“She’ll no doubt have plenty to start with,” was the rejoinder. “You
see, in the Arctic there are practically no changes in the
temperature from night to day, resulting in expansion and
contraction of the helium gas in the bag. She could be adrift an
indefinite period without losing gas enough to cause any trouble.”
“It certainly seems to have been all figured out,” remarked Bob.
“Nothing has been overlooked, I imagine,” said the captain. “Of
course, it’s only a project as yet, and, for some reason, the trip
may never come off. But if it does, I have no doubt that the result
will reflect credit on the men who take part in it and add new
luster to the Stars and Stripes. You boys will see——”
The words died on the captain’s lips. The boys jumped to their feet.
All had been startled by a heavy crash on the roof of the house!