THE _Ocean Flyer_ CREW IS COMPLETED
Before the arrival of the big automobile, Ned and Alan had a conference
with the man in the rear room on the first floor. In all their
aeronautical experience, one constant annoyance had been their inability
to estimate exactly the speed at which they were traveling. Advancing
either with or against the wind—which is always in motion a few hundred
feet above the ground—they always had to take the readings of the
anemometer with allowances. With the airship speeding into the wind, the
pressure set up by the aeroplane itself was increased by the force of
the encountered wind. The flight of a balloon directly upward is
accurately determined by the barometer. But the drift of a dirigible is
largely a matter of judgment or deduction from the anemometer readings.
Because of this the boys had been utilizing the reserve monoplanes of
the Universal Transportation Company and some of the lighter, standard
aeroplanes of the manufacturing company, to make experiments in flight
speed and how to determine this speed with exactness. Alan, the
mathematician of the young partners, had made deductions based on their
accumulated data and these he had recently submitted to the engineering
department of the company. In the light of the new project this phase of
their work had an added importance.
At times, when there was no appreciable breeze (and the boys were always
on the lookout for these infrequent occasions) quick flights had been
made and the speed of the aeroplane in relation to propeller revolutions
had been exactly timed by land marks. Records were also made of the
anemometer register on these trips, the latter giving, in the absence of
wind, the real pressure on the instrument due to the rush of the
aeroplane through the air. At other times, flights were made in the
wind, both with and against it. The movement of the atmosphere was
carefully measured before these flights and from these figures, compared
with the wind gauge readings recorded when the aeroplane was under
power—at all speeds of the propeller—tables were made of pressure due
wholly to the wind and that caused by the flight of the air craft.
Different forms of propellers were used and out of this mass of
statistics the engineer of the company and Alan had worked out formulas
for speed computation.
“We’ve got to know the wind, Lieutenant,” exclaimed Alan as the boys
looked over the engineer’s neatly recorded calculations. “If we don’t
know and can’t measure that, we’re as helpless as the old sea dog who
navigates ‘by guess and by God.’ We may guess right on its velocity when
we start a flight, but in a little while the whizzing sound dulls your
sense of speed. You may make a bad mistake in rising or ‘banking’ and
you won’t know where you are—especially at sea.”
“‘Bird sense’ is all right for race track stunts,” added Ned, “but it
won’t do when you’re out of sight of land. We’ve got to have something
that is automatic; something, at least, that we can use as a guide for
figures.”
Upon his desk and at other places in the engineer’s room were aneroid
barometers, a new pocket device in shape like a watch especially
interesting the young aviators. A barograph for automatically recording
air pressure and indicating height in the air, not only received
attention but was at once repacked in its case to be taken to Newark. A
new aerometer was also wrapped up for the same purpose.
“This barograph looks like a good thing,” the engineer explained. “It
has a recording cylinder that revolves by clockwork and the indicator
needle bears on a series of levers which communicate their displacements
to a pen arm. Each movement of the mercury is then recorded on the
cylinder. On that you have a graphic story of your up and down journey.”
Compensated and gyroscopic compasses, statoscopes for measuring
equilibrium, thermometers and shaft speed indicators were also to be
seen. But with the new barograph and the new aerometer, Ned and Alan
seemed to content themselves for the time.
“Mr. Russell tells me the new ‘Flyer’ did all you expected of it,” said
the engineer.
“It’ll do two hundred miles at sea level when it’s tuned up,” answered
Ned proudly.
“Then you’ll certainly make your ocean flight?” suggested the engineer.
The boys immediately explained in brief the new program. The engineer
heard them soberly.
“In that event,” he said at once, “you’d better take several days for
experimenting with the wind and speed pressure of the new car. I can’t
guarantee that the figures made for the other machines will apply to
this one. I’ll come to the works in the morning and make the kite and
ground records while you young gentlemen get me the flight pressures of
the ‘Flyer’ under all conditions.”
“Fine,” exclaimed Alan. “You know you’ll have to project a new ocean
course for us with all the variations, sailing rhumbs and course
alterations.”
“From New York to London?” asked the engineer nodding his head. “I wish
you could have counted on the stops at St. Johns and Cape Clear in
Ireland. I’d have felt better about it,” he continued turning to his
desk and opening a large portfolio. “That chart is ready.”
“Let’s have a look,” exclaimed Ned.
On a United States Hydrographic Office “Pilot Chart of the North
Atlantic Ocean,” the boys traced a slightly circular line reaching from
St. Johns in Newfoundland to Brow Head and Cape Clear, in Ireland just
below which appeared the little dot indicating Fastnet Light, the first
old world signal to passengers from America. Far north of any steamer
route, the seeming curve of the lieutenant’s projected line of flight
was seen to be really a succession of straight lines—the sailing
variations and compass courses from hour to hour.
In neat engineering letters, in a vacant place on the map, was this
memorandum: “From St. Johns, Newfoundland, to Fastnet Rock, Ireland, by
great circle is 1666 miles. Initial course is N. 66 E. true. Final
course is S. 81 E. Therefore you port one-eighth of a point every
seventy-five miles easting.”
Alan made a few figures with his pencil on a corner of the chart. “A
point,” he said aloud, “is eleven degrees and fifteen minutes.
One-eighth of that is one degree and twenty-four minutes. Every
seventy-five miles we port one degree and twenty-four minutes.”
“Exactly,” replied the lieutenant, “and that’s why you’ve got to be
right on your speed measurement. Then, knowing the distance covered, you
can navigate by compass.”
“The machine is out here eatin’ her head off,” shouted Bob at this
juncture. “Get a move on, youse ducks, I’ve wired the works to have
lunch ready for us.”
“In a minute,” answered Ned. He turned to the engineer again. “Did you
work out those distances and the time from St. Johns to New York by rail
and steamer?”
In some of the preliminary talk on the possibilities of a transoceanic
aeroplane service it had been suggested that the actual air flights be
between Brow Head or Cape Clear in Ireland and St. Johns in
Newfoundland. But the boys had been so busy on the new sky-craft that
they had not gone into the shore ends of this suggestion.
“I’m afraid the company would beat itself by doing that,” answered the
engineer. “However fast you flew from Cape Clear to St. Johns, you’d
lose so much time by finishing the trip on land that the big liners
would almost beat you in. It’s eighteen hundred and forty-five miles
from St. Johns by rail through Nova Scotia up to Montreal and down to
New York and the present train schedule calls for seventy-four hours to
cover it.”
“How about rail to Halifax and then by steamer to Boston and New York?”
“Worse,” laughed the lieutenant. “That would take nearly eighty hours.”
“That settles it,” announced Ned picking up the barograph case. “It will
be New York to London direct. We can’t afford to hustle over the
Atlantic at two hundred miles an hour to lose one hundred and fifty
miles an hour on a slow fifty mile an hour express train. Lieutenant,”
he added affectionately, patting their skilled assistant on the
shoulder, “we’ll be glad to see you to-morrow and we’ll do all the
experimenting you suggest. But, sometime in the next six days, just
piece out that ocean course and hook London and New York on the ends of
it.”
“That’s almost what I’ll do in reality,” was the prompt answer of the
engineer. “Until you figure it, you’d hardly believe that a direct east
or true great circle sailing course between London and New York would
pass over St. Johns. But it’ll come mighty close to it. The route I’ve
projected,” he explained pointing to the sweeping curve on the chart,
“if extended on the same lines, will pass just south of New York bay.”
Alan had the new aerometer under his arm but at this suggestion he
laughed, put it down and opened an atlas of the world. Turning to the
map of Ireland with his finger he followed the southern shore line until
it came to Cape Clear. Nearby he made out a small town from which he
traced the Cork, Bandon and Southern Railway, connecting through Cork
with Dublin on the east coast. Then he slammed the book shut and
exclaimed:
“All aboard, in Aeroplane Number One, for St. Johns, Newfoundland,
Skibbereen, Ireland, and London. First stop St. Johns. All aboard.
_Ocean Flyer_ leaves in one minute.”
Major Honeywell and their guest now appeared and Ned and Alan hurried
with them to the automobile. In the trip to the ferry and across the
Hudson river Ned entertained the _Herald_ manager with an account of
what a flight across the ocean meant.
“Ordinarily,” said the journalist at one time, “all I have seen to-day
and what you are telling me would make very good newspaper reading—to
say nothing of what we threw away last night.”
“And I’ve been livin’ in that kind of stuff for over three years,”
volunteered Bob, “without writing a tenth of what I knew.”
“I’m afraid your reportorial instincts are a little dulled,” laughed the
editor.
“No, sir, not by a jugful,” retorted Bob. “When I do break out it’ll be
good and proper. They’ve had me for three years just where they had the
_Herald_ last night.” Evidently Bob was a little touched by the comment
of the editor. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make a guess you’ve found out
considerable to-day that _you_ ain’t goin’ to print.”
“You’re right,” laughed the editor heartily. “I’ll withdraw what I said.
Your friends seem wonderfully successful in keeping their business to
themselves. You’re quite right. The _Herald_ is going to print nothing
that will detract from the spectacular finish of what we shall try to
do.”
“We’ve been counting on that, of course,” broke in Ned. “And even after
we make the trip,” he went on, “I hope the _Herald_ will never print
anything more than we tell its reporters. There are some ideas that we
can only protect by secrecy.”
“You mean that what I have personally seen and been told to-day is
confidential? Of course. Feel perfectly free, while I am with you, to
say what you like. All editors must be able to distinguish between
conversation that carries news and the free talk of friends.”
The car was speeding out of Jersey City on the marsh road westward
toward Arlington.
“If every flight we have made over these marshes had left a mark in the
air,” remarked Alan, “that sky up there would look like a waffle.”
“Are all three of you equally old in this aviation business?” asked the
editor smiling and unconsciously looking skyward as if he really
expected to see a maze of aerial paths.
“Bob is what we call an auxiliary,” explained Alan. “He hasn’t flown as
often as he wanted to but he’s no tenderfoot. However, his chance is
comin’. He’ll have to make a full hand on this ocean trip.”
“Will it require three of you to operate the machine?” the editor asked.
“Four,” answered Ned. “There’s a young man out at the works, Roy
Osborne—the son of the chief engineer—who has had experience all over
the country. He’ll probably be the fourth member of the crew.”
“Tell me what each one does,” asked the editor straightening up and
grasping his Panama to make sure the speeding car did not tear it from
his head. “Talk about two hundred miles an hour,” he added with a
grimace as he saw forty-five miles indicated on the speedometer, “this
is enough for me.”
“Me too,” announced Ned to the editor’s surprise. “There’s more sense of
speed right now in this car goin’ forty-five miles an hour—and more real
danger too,” he added positively—“than there is in an airship going
sixty miles an hour. In the air, our road bed is perfect. Here a rut may
pitch the whole machine over the fence. High up in the air you have no
objects along your path to measure flight. The ground is so far away
that it is no criterion. In the air, at your highest speed, there is
almost no sense of motion. It’s like a swiftly ascending balloon in
which you can only judge your flight by tossing paper overboard.”
“Tommy rot,” broke in Bob, “you talk as if you were selling aeroplanes.
Ruts in the road! There are more ‘ruts,’ ‘holes,’ ‘pockets’ and ‘chasms’
in the air than you’ll find on the worst roads on the ground. And that
ain’t all! You can’t see ’em till you’re in ’em. The death record this
year tells what they mean too. As for bein’ no danger, give me an
automobile and a place to fall even if it is hard.”
“Then you’re not going?” asked the editor wonderingly.
“Sure,” answered Bob. “That’s one reason I’m goin’. And that’s the
reason the _Herald_ is goin’ to give us $60,000. You can bet you
wouldn’t give us that for drivin’ an automobile to San Francisco—even at
top speed. It’s the chances we take of strikin’ one of these ‘gullies’
up in the sky and turnin’ turtle just where the Atlantic is deepest and
wettest.”
“He’s all right now,” was Alan’s quiet comment when Bob had finished.
“Bob always blows off under pressure.”
“Well,” said the editor in turn, “I had an idea—a suggestion—but Mr.
Russell’s speech almost killed it. Still—”
“What is it?” insisted Ned.
“You said you had not definitely made up your crew. For a time I was
prompted to ask if all your operators had to be persons of experience
with aeroplanes.”
“They should be, on a trip like this,” explained Ned, “but not
necessarily so. They must have coolness, however, and nerve and
endurance.”
“Would it be out of the way for me to send a representative with you?”
“If you had the sort of man we could use, that is, one that could stand
watch with us and who was not merely a passenger,” answered Ned looking
at Alan and noting that the latter approved, “it would not only be
proper but we’d be glad to make him our fourth man.”
“I’m sure I have such a young man,” continued the editor quickly, “and
he is just about your own age. I never saw him until two o’clock this
morning.”
“You mean the guy that tipped us off to the _Herald_,” exclaimed Bob
impulsively.
The editor nodded his head with a smile.
“The young man we saw leaving your office as we entered it?” asked Ned
edging forward.
“Buckingham Stewart, a _Herald_ reporter,” answered the editor. “He
seems to me to have all the qualities you name. I don’t know that he’ll
care to take the risk. If he does, I offer him as my representative.”
“Don’t you worry about him not goin’ if he gets a chance,” volunteered
Bob.
“Alan,” said Ned with a broad smile, “if this fellow was smart enough to
find out all he did about the _Flyer_ without a look at it in the
daylight or a word from us, it’ll take him about fifteen minutes to
understand it when he really sees it. I say, take him.”
“I’m agreeable,” answered Alan and the crew was complete.