THE WRECK OF THE YACHT
Hike was seated by the _Hustle_ one windy afternoon, finishing
rewinding the fastening of a small interior strut, or prop, when
Poodle came rushing up, returning from town.
“Hike,” he cried, “there’s a yacht going to pieces down the coast.
Belongs to a rich guy that lives at Pacific Grove. She’s sending out
an S.O.S. by wireless. The Presidio wireless caught it. Her operator
says she ran onto a ledge down near Sur—how far is that? About twenty
miles down the coast? There’s big swells after that storm yesterday,
and they can’t launch a boat. Besides, the yacht’s stuck on a long
slippery ledge that’s hard to land on.”
“Where’s the revenue cutter?” asked Hike.
“Gone north.”
“Well,” said Hike, very calmly, “well, looks to me as if we’d have to
save ’em—folks on yacht.”
“_Us?_ How?” Poodle looked disturbed.
“Haven’t we got the best aeroplane in the world right here? I guess
swells won’t bother the _Hustle_ much.”
“Us—alone in an aeroplane?” wailed Poodle. “And me never been up in
one any time? Jiminy, you ain’t serious, are you, Hike?”
Hike looked so quiet that Poodle, much confused at the prospect, knew
he _was_ serious. Hike had already started filling the _Hustle’s_
fuel tank with gasoline, after finishing the strut-fastening while he
was talking.
“Get that long rope that came on the engine,” Hike ordered.
“All _right_, Geerawld,” sighed Poodle. “’F I’m going to get killed,
I might’s well insult you while I have the chance.” He trotted out
and found the rope, singing “Geerawld, brave HEro, brave HEro,” in a
most cheerful manner. He was frightened at the prospect of his first
aeroplaning, with so young an aviator as Hike, but once he admitted
that, he stopped worrying about it, and wanted to get the first part
of the ride over.
“Coil the rope there—uh—well—amidships,” said Hike. “Come on,
now—_shove_!”
Perspiring and grunting, with their feet slipping on the turf floor
of the aerodrome, they pushed out the big machine, then stood resting.
“Scared?” quizzed Hike.
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I’ll tell you now—you’d better know it if you’re going up
with me. I’ve been running this tetrahedral for a week. Priest and
I kept it quiet because the Lieutenant thinks I’m too young to run
one, and Father’d be scared blue if he knew I was doing it. I don’t
want to frighten him, and so I want to be a good, safe, crackerjack
aviator before he knows. So keep still about this flight. But don’t
worry. Why, one night—dark night, too—I flew this thing clear up to
San Francisco—about a hundred and fifty miles the course we took—and
circled over the city. And Priest never touched the levers except for
a couple of minutes, while we were landing. All aboard.”
“Right!” said Poodle. Very gingerly, as though he were afraid of
breaking something, Poodle crawled into the passenger-seat beside the
aviator’s and stammered, “Gee, I don’t like the promenade deck on
this liner. Too narrow for playing tag.”
Hike swung easily into his seat, snapped on the self-starter, and
grasped the levers, shouting, “We’ll be down there by one o’clock.”
The machine bobbed roughly over the start, like a frightened hen
with wings outspread, and launched beautifully. Hike, happy at being
up in the brisk breeze and bright sunshine, hummed a little song to
himself, and swung the _Hustle_ southward.
Poodle held his breath and waited.
For five minutes, they followed the coast-line, at sixty miles an
hour—an easy speed for the _Hustle_, with her powerful engine; then
Hike struck the clutch in the second notch.
At the second speed, they whirled at a hundred miles an hour. They
rocked and bumped on the air-currents coming up between cliffs.
Poodle held his cap before his face, trying to catch his breath, and
clung to a strut with his other hand. He was too frightened to look
down at the cliffs, that rushed like a black streak beneath them, but
he kept arguing with himself, “Now, Poodle, me boy, now Poodle, cheer
up. You’re a nice kid, Poodle, and you’ll sure get a golden harp,
even if you _do_ get killt!”
In fifteen minutes, they were over the barren coast near Sur, and
Hike made out the wrecked yacht—a long, low line of white-painted
hull, with masts and stack tilting far over on the ledge where she
stuck, smashed by heavy surf that was breaking over her. A man was
tied to the mast-head, waving a signal flag wildly at the _Hustle_.
A little group of people clung to the upper rail of the yacht,
watching, waiting, chilled and wet.
Hike slowed down and let the _Hustle_ hover over the wreck, looking
curiously down at the white faces that peered up at him, from amid
spray. A huge comber swept over them—and one man was carried away.
Shrieks and wails came up to him through the thunder of the surf, as
he shut off the motor for a second.
With a quick glance, he studied out the landing places nearby.
Between the wreck and the shore there was only a wave-swept ledge of
rock. The shore itself was mostly composed of sheer black cliffs that
ran straight down into the water. Up these terrible walls the waves
ran; up ten—fifteen—twenty feet, and crashed down again, leaving the
rocks shining with water. But at one spot, the shore ran in, leaving
a triangle of nearly dry beach, from which a man could climb up the
cliffs to safety.
That was enough for Hike. “Let that rope hang in big loop—so—”
he yelled to Poodle. “Fasten two ends to strut. Tight. Reg’lar
anchor-knot. Let loop hang below machine.”
As Poodle obeyed, Hike hovered directly over the wreck, in the
smallest circles he could manage, and at the slowest rate he could
make the _Hustle_ go.
The faster an aeroplane skates over her thin crust of air—like a boy
on thin ice—the safer she is. But with the _Hustle’s_ many planes,
she could hover, like a gull over a crumb in the water.
Yelling down to the people twenty feet below, waving, he made them
understand that they were to wrap themselves, one by one, in the
loop of the dangling rope. Finally, as the rope swept over the deck,
a tall man in a reefer caught it, sat in the loop as if it were a
trapeze, and was carried out over the waves, his dangling feet
kicking violently.
Keeping her speed down, Hike slowly swung across to the triangle of
beach and dipped. The man slipped down his trapeze—safe! on dry land!
He yelled twice, for joy, then staggered toward the cliff and began
to climb. Already Hike was circling back to the wreck. As he passed
the cliff, the left end of the machine missed it by only three feet.
Even Hike shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if he
had run full tilt into the cliff, and crumpled up the _Hustle_.
But he drove back to the wreck, and again some one—a woman, this
time, terrified, and twice missing the rope before she climbed into
the trapeze—was taken ashore.
The wreck was fast breaking up, and Hike hurried as much as he could.
While carrying some one, he had to take it slow, but on his return
trips he hurled the _Hustle_ out into the gale as though he were
racing.
There were thirty persons on the wreck. As he landed the seventeenth
(who was the yacht-owner) on the safe beach, he was thinking hard.
Two things he had noticed; that the tide was filling up the triangle
of beach, so that his passengers had to climb up out of dangerous
undertow that now surged over what had been safe land; and that he
had to hurry, because the fragile yacht was fast breaking up.
Yes, he had to hurry—but he didn’t want to run into the cliffs he had
barely missed. He thrust the elevating plane sharply up, and shot
toward the top of the rock-wall so straight that the tetrahedral
seemed to stand on her tail.
Poodle clutched the sides of his seat. He saw his feet up as high as
his head, and felt as though he were falling backwards. He gasped,
and before he had finished gasping, his heart missed a beat.
For—still standing on her tail—the _Hustle_ was caught in a terrible
flaw of wind, and hurled a hundred feet up into the air. A breaker
had brought in a draft that, shooting up through a treacherous gap in
the cliffs, became a treacherous whirlwind.
Hike’s heart thumped, too. He wished that Martin Priest were at the
levers. But he kept hold of himself. He turned down the elevating
planes; then raised them slightly, then shot them down again; and
rode over the column of lifting air into a calm space.
He swung back to the wreck, determined to make quicker work of the
rest of the rescue. The waves were increasing and the yacht could not
stand much more.
He beckoned Poodle, and shouted to him “Going to land on yacht. You
drop off first time I circle. Here, take revolver—my back pocket. If
people scared, threaten ’em. Make ’em pile planks so I can land. Make
’em get in—all of ’em—when I land. Make ’em stay quiet when I start.”
“All r-r-r-right.”
They circled over the yacht. Poodle, the revolver in his teeth,
slid down the dangling rope and fell on the slippery sloping deck
of the yacht. Along her terribly listed hull, water was running
free. Poodle clung to the lower rail, pulled off his socks and his
trim fashionable tan shoes, and staggered up the deck. The group of
thirteen men (all the women were off) watched him curiously.
Not one, except a cabin-boy, of these people, but what was many
years older than plump Poodle. Any one of the sturdy Norwegian
sailors could have broken him in two. But when he yelled “Pile up
these boats—tear up that wrecked wheelhouse—make landing stage for
aeroplane,” they jumped to obey.
With Poodle tugging at planks beside the gold-braided sailing-master
and a ragged fireman in overalls, with even the cabin-boy climbing
along the wet deck in his drenched white jacket, they hastily piled a
rude platform, with a capstan for support.
Hike was hovering in long easy circles, overhead. When Poodle waved
and shouted, Hike swung astern, and came down, with the motor
stopped. Slipping and skidding on the wet planking, the _Hustle_ went
clean off the platform, and plunged toward the sea, while the sailors
shrieked in horror. A great wave broke on the wreck, and covered the
aeroplane with a cloud of spray, but through it Hike glided, started
his motor, circled about, constantly rising, then again stopped his
motor and planed down, easily, landing on the farther edge of the
rough platform.
He was hoarse from shouting through the roar of motor and waves,
but as Poodle rushed up to him, with his round face shining with
gladness—and spray!—Hike croaked, “Run out planks—runway.”
On blocks and boxes, the crew propped up planks along which the
wheels of the _Hustle’s_ chassis could run in starting.
“Get ’em in—_all_!” shouted Hike.
“Get in—all of you. Fill up those three seats, and crowd on that
freight-platform,” bellowed Poodle.
The sailing-master was a commanding figure, even in his drenched
uniform. He was large and dignified and used to ordering people
about. But he came up to Poodle as though that youth owned the yacht
and the sea.
“Isn’t the space too small for all—?” he began respectfully.
“No! Get in. Quick All’v you!” roared Poodle, leaning back sturdily
on his short plump legs. Lean, sinewy Hike grinned—tired though he
was from the struggle with the winds—to see his chum taking command.
The sailing-master hesitated. He looked from Poodle’s chubby young
face to the great flying-machine, then back, then suddenly shrugged
his shoulders and roared to his crew:
“Get in there. All of you.... I’ll follow them,” he finished, turning
back to Poodle.
Packed like herrings in a barrel, the crew clung together on the
platform aft of the aviator’s seat, where once two thousand pounds of
Martin Priest’s baggage had ridden. The sailing-master slipped into
one seat, Poodle into another, and they were ready.
Hike started the engine, and the tetrahedral ran along the flimsy
planks which had been laid for a runway. She bounced off them,
raised, whirled out, kicked up spray, and then shot up, wavering.
Hike had never been so much on the job before in all his life. He was
frightened, for fourteen lives besides his depended on him. He almost
deflected the elevator, which would have sent them down into the sea.
But he kicked himself into courage, and studied the air-currents made
by sea and cliffs.
With all this load, and their bad start from slippery planks, the
_Hustle_ was wobbly and sulky. But he worked her up, up, toward the
top of the cliffs, when he wanted—oh! so awfully! to let her run low.
He cleared the top of the cliffs, ran down the wind, and, shutting
off the motor, made a safe landing in a stretch of chaparral.
The sailing-master crawled out and silently held out his hand to
Hike, then to Poodle. As he did so, the owner of the yacht rushed up,
and held out his hand, too. Then there was a rush of people, while
the owner’s wife began to cry with relief.
“Please tell me—now—what I can do in return,” began the owner. “I’m
pretty well off—”
“Just two things,” croaked Hike, huskily. “Keep this out of the
papers—don’t say how you got rescued. And then maybe some day I may
come buttin’ in asking you if you won’t put some capital behind the
inventor of this aeroplane. As a business proposition. Gee, I’m
tired. I’m going to beat it back home. Come on, Poodle. Crawl in.
Say, you people, I guess from the way it looks when you’re way up in
the aeroplane, you’ll find a road about a mile east of here. I’ll
tell your people you’re on it—have ’em send teams. So long.”
Blushing at making so long a speech before so many people, Hike again
started his motor, and was off for home.