BUCK STEWART RECEIVES NEW ORDERS
“Come aboard,” called out Ned, giving the young _Herald_ reporter a look
that also included him. The managing editor paused, seemed about to open
a conversation with Buck and then said nothing. The smile of the latter
was a combination of assurance and of gentlemanly modesty and breeding.
Added to this was the charm of a faint southern accent. Buck was not
exactly superficial but his peculiar and animated face never betrayed a
lack of knowledge.
“Up the ladder,” added Alan, and Major Honeywell led the way up a
step-ladder to a short flight of landing steps lowered from a side
gallery along the lower deck. Reaching this little metal gallery or
walk, the boys led the two visitors astern to the end of the enclosed
part of the airship and up a stairway that passed around the after part
of the car to the second deck and from that to the top, where a
protected walk or bridge extended the length of the airship car.
Bob, rushing ahead, caught up a metal jack staff from its cleats on the
bridge rail and unfurled a blue flag on which were the words “_Ocean
Flyer_.”
“I think we ought to carry another flag now with _New York Herald_ on
it. We can carry the colors aft where they belong and put the _Herald_
burgee on the port staff.”
The editor seemed pleased. Looking from one boy to the other as if to
get approval, he did not notice the look of sudden intelligence that
flashed over Buck’s face. Since two o’clock that morning Buck had been
trying to answer the question: “Why had the _Herald_ killed his story?”
He knew there was a reason. For the last fifteen minutes a new problem
had mystified him: “Why was his managing editor so interested in the new
aeroplane?” The cross examination he had undergone the night before gave
him many clues. The instant Bob Russell spoke of a _Herald_ burgee for
the _Ocean Flyer_, Buck’s mental short circuit was repaired: “They’re
goin’ to represent the _Herald_,” he concluded instantly—not stopping to
reason,—“and this car is goin’ to cross the Atlantic. Whatever these
kids _meant_ to do, the boss has now hooked up with ’em. The biggest
thing they can do is to fly to Europe. The boss stopped the story to
pull off the stunt in secret. I’ve got to go with ’em.”
The car on which the inspectors were standing resembled, in front, both
the bow and the stern of a yacht. Seven feet from the bottom, the
curving side lines ended in a cutwater edge. Above this, for six feet,
the front was rounded and pierced by heavy, glass protected ports. Four
feet from the bottom of the car, a shaft extended through the cut water
carrying a third or auxiliary propeller, moon shaped like the side
propellers, but seven feet instead of eleven in length. This reserve
propelling force was for use in case either of the other propellers
became disabled, in which event both side propellers would of course
have to be shut down.
The heavy glass ports marked the pilot room. Directly over this and
extending forward from the top of the car like the headlight of an
old-fashioned locomotive, was the air compression funnel. This dull
finished aluminum adjunct resembled a fog horn, and its functions were
explained by the young aviators with considerable pride.
“We’ll carry oxygen of course,” Ned said, “but we are so sure that our
compressor will furnish us with enough air, that we’re counting on it if
we attempt a high altitude. Whether we go above a thousand feet depends
on the weather conditions. On that level we can fly one hundred and
eighty miles an hour. And that’ll put us over in seventeen hours.”
Buck was listening with both ears. At these words he knit his brows as
he checked off figures on his fingers and then, with a pencil, did a
problem on an envelope.
The party had just made a close examination of the funnel compressor and
the two double acting acetylene and electric search lights. As its
members turned, Ned came up with Buck.
“Can I help you?” he asked mischievously, noting Buck’s calculation.
“Yes,” answered young Stewart. “Let me go with you.”
“Where?” asked Ned looking directly at Buck.
“Wherever you carry the _Herald_ flag and wherever one hundred and
eighty miles an hour takes you in seventeen hours which is 3060 miles
from here—London it might be.”
The major, the editor and Alan were advancing out on the tail runway to
examine the big equilibrium plane and the gigantic rudders. Instead of
answering Buck, Ned said:
“Do you usually use a pencil to find how much seventeen times one
hundred and eighty is?”
“You don’t reckon I’m a lightning calculator do you?” answered Buck. “I
use a pencil for anything above the ‘nines’ when I want to be sure.”
“Can you subtract sixty-eight degrees and forty-five minutes from
seventy degrees and fifteen minutes?” asked Ned without a smile.
“Forty-five minutes from fifteen minutes?” repeated Buck twisting his
pencil. “That don’t seem right. Oh yes, you borrow, of course. One
degree,” he went on, “that’s—” and he hesitated.
“You know how many minutes there are in a degree, don’t you?” prompted
Ned, smiling at last.
“Three hundred and sixty,” exclaimed Buck proudly.
Ned held up his hands in amazed despair. Buck didn’t seem the most
promising material for a competent observer. And yet there was something
about the _Herald_ reporter that made Ned anxious to take him along.
“I suppose there isn’t such a job as steward or galley boy on this
ship,” went on Buck with his engaging smile. But Ned could only answer
him with a shake of the head. Then, leading the way to the gallery of
the second deck all passed into the pilot room. In no way, except in
size did it differ from the wheel house of an ocean liner.
The compass box, with its compensating magnetic mechanism beneath and
its shaded lights above, stood just in front of the steering wheel,
beneath which, parallel with but not connected with it, was the larger
plane elevating and depressing wheel. Both the steering and plane wheels
operated indirectly, utilizing compressed air cylinders to move the big
rudder and wing surfaces. At the right of these wheels was the engine
control; a lever board containing the starting and stopping levers for
each engine and the gear clutch for each wheel. At the left, in compact
semicircular form, was the signal board, the automatic indicator which
gave at all times a record of the position of each plane, the set of the
rudder, the speed of the engines and, below this, the air craft
chronometer.
Hanging at the pilot’s left side and on a line with his face was a
speaking tube. But it was on the rear of the pilot that indicators and
gauges appeared in confusion. This was the observer’s station. On each
side of the room a small door opened onto the side galleries. Aft of the
door on the port side a metal ladder led through the floor into the
compartment beneath. On the starboard side, between the gallery door and
the aft partition, stood the observer’s desk. Here all readings were
recorded, the detailed log continuously set down and the observer
performed his duty as assistant to the pilot.
Many of the instruments were enclosed in an outside case open to the
weather and wind. Heavy glass doors gave the observer access to this
case but his observations were to be made, in the main, through the
glass. The aerometer, attached to the top of this outer case, registered
on the observer’s desk. The automatic barograph, the checking barometer
and a self-recording thermometer were housed in the exposed case. Within
the room the equilibrium statoscope, the compressed air gauge for all
compartments, interior thermometer, chart racks, hooks for pressure and
speed tables and indicators to show the consumption of fuel and
lubricating oil, covered the walls except in the center of the rear
bulkhead where a door gave access to the next compartment.
In this pilot room, the heart of the gigantic airship, Ned turned
lecturer. The place was small and hot but no one seemed to mind these
things.
“How about your compressed air funnel?” asked the major pointing to the
bank of aluminum tubes that passed along the roof of the cabin. “Has it
been tested?”
“That’s different,” answered Alan. “That proposition stands like the
answer to two plus two. We all concede this is four.”
“And you mean to say that you may send this thing seven or eight miles
up in the air where a bird couldn’t live and where it may be sixty
degrees below zero, on the theory that your funnel will gather in air
for you and make heat enough to keep you from freezing?” added the
editor.
“Just that,” laughed Ned, “although, of course we don’t have to stay up
there. If anything goes wrong we’ve got our oxygen and we’ll have
clothing, too, that Peary or Cook might have used.”
“But it _will_ work,” went on Alan with equal enthusiasm, “and the man
at that desk, with his air-pressure gauges for each room and his stop
cocks for each compartment, will keep us as comfortable as if we were at
sea level and he’ll keep our engines running without a break.”
“Stewart,” suddenly exclaimed the apparently embarrassed editor turning
to his reporter, “your story about this marvelous craft was killed last
night because the _Herald_ hoped to make an arrangement with these young
men, its designers and owners, to make a trip across the Atlantic to
London in the interest of the paper. This has been made. I think the
assignment will be the biggest newspaper beat ever achieved. What you
are now hearing is confidential.”
“Yes, sir,” responded Buck. “Can’t I go along?”
“I was just about to say,” went on the editor, “that, for a short time,
I was disposed to ask the privilege of having a representative on board
and that I meant to select you—”
“And you can’t find a place for me?” Buck interrupted with the fetching
little twist of the mouth that had caught Ned.
“The only place open was this desk,” explained Ned.
“I can do it,” exclaimed Buck.
“You mean you’d try,” said Ned.
“That’s it,” went on the editor. “I now see that I have no one who could
be useful here. I withdraw my request. At least, young man,” he added,
turning to Buck, “I have shown my appreciation of your work by
complimenting you with the suggestion.”
“What’d you have to do to these things?” persisted Buck, undefeated,
after he had blushingly acknowledged his superior’s compliment.
“Something more difficult than multiplying one hundred and eighty by
seventeen,” announced Ned with a laugh.
His good natured smile yet showing on his lips, though puckered in
chagrin, the disappointed Buck followed the party through the rear cabin
door into the next compartment, “Stateroom No. 1.” This little
apartment, six feet high, eight feet wide and the same in depth, had a
door and a window on each side and the metal frame work of a cot, six
feet in length, against the rear wall, the remaining two feet of space
being devoted to another door opening into a similar room. The
compartment walls were of metal and perfectly bare. Beneath the cot was
a metal tank six feet by three feet by three feet, in which fifty-four
cubic feet of fuel could be stored.
“There are three of these rooms,” explained Ned. “In each are electric
lights, compressed air cocks and exhaust pipes. We’ll put thin
mattresses and bed clothing in each.”
“Put in some skeleton tables for typewriters and some camp chairs,”
suggested the editor. “I don’t believe the men will have time for
sleeping.”
“And the last room, Number three,” went on Ned, “we’ll rig up as a dark
room for your photographer.”
Buck could restrain himself no longer. Stepping to his superior’s side
he asked appealingly:
“Are you going to send _Herald_ men on this trip?”
“They’re not going,” answered the editor a little irritably as if this
were getting too close to the real object of the trip. “They are coming
back.”
“Three or four of ’em,” persisted the reporter.
The editor nodded his head slightly as if out of patience.
“Let me go across then,” pleaded Buck. “If these men can come back I
certainly wouldn’t make much difference goin’. I _may_ come in handy,
somewhere. And I’ll stay, when I get there. Dump me out anywhere. I
won’t care. I know London like a book.”
“You know London like a book?” exclaimed Ned instantly.
But Buck was at last too agitated to respond. His lips were twisting in
an effort to show his usual composure.
“I say,” repeated Ned. “Do you actually know London and its
surroundings?”
“I’ve lived there,” answered Stewart, “and driven my grandfather’s motor
over every road I could find.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” almost shouted Ned. “You’re booked right now,
young man, and this’ll be your room east bound.”
“Me?”
“And we’ll carry you three thousand miles to use you fifteen minutes or
less. You’re our landing pilot and what you don’t know about London
you’d better find out in the next six days.”
Buck took off his straw hat, wiped the perspiration from his face,
hitched his trousers and then made his speech in two words. “Thank you,”
he said and for the first time he seemed absolutely confused. Ned and
Alan had hurried on and the elder men were crowding through the narrow
door into the stateroom when Buck held out his hand and stopped his
fellow reporter, Bob.
“Russell,” he whispered, “what’s the game? You’re on!”
Bob glanced toward the door and then, in a low voice, answered:
“We’re goin’ to pick up three staff men in London at two o’clock on
Coronation Day and, while they’re knockin’ out the big story, shoot ’em
over the Atlantic in twelve hours with the _Herald’s_ next day leads.
While they’re clickin’ these off, the picture man in the back room is
gettin’ ready all the parade stuff with snaps of George and Mary and
flash lights of the show in Westminster—”
Buck eyed him open-mouthed.
“Ain’t you in on this?” he asked breathlessly.
“I’m the engineer in overalls.”
Buck’s vacant stare suggested a vain attempt to think.
“Don’t worry,” laughed Bob, “you’ll be dumped in London.”
“And you and I don’t get a look in?” went on Buck, still absently.
“I’m used to it,” answered Bob. “My long suit is missin’ big stories.”
“And I’ve made a good start,” added Buck ruefully. “But,” and suddenly
the old twitch of his lips came back, “I’ll stick around as long as I
can.”
The two reporters met the inspection party at the rear of the enclosed
car where the extra gasoline and ether tanks under the companionway
leading to the tail truss were being examined. Then all descended to the
lower deck and entered the sixteen by eight foot engine room. Through
the center of this, in bearings, ran the big propeller shaft and next to
the rear wall stood the powerful, unique engines that were to make
success or failure of the perilous project. Fuel and lubricator gauges
and indicators, shaft revolution recorders, an electric generator, a
signal board duplicating the one in the pilot room above, racks of
electric hand lights, tools and oil cans, the compressed air pipes on
the ceiling, fixed, green-shaded lights over the two circular engines,
switch boards for the compartment, port and starboard signal lights and
the forward search lights, acetylene gas tanks and the heavy emergency
clutch levers seemed to fill the compartment.
Yet, Ned led the fascinated visitors through this seeming confusion and
for fifteen minutes attempted to make clear the mechanical complexity of
the hitherto unheard of ether gas turbine double engine. When he tried
to make clear how gasoline and sulphuric ether were to be combined to
make a new explosive fuel of infinitely greater power than gasoline
alone, and how this enabled them to economize in the amount of gasoline
carried, the editor surrendered.
“I’m glad to sign that contract,” he exclaimed with relieved expression,
“so long as I am the party of the first part that merely pays and you
are the party of the second part that works this thing.”
“And you’ll use it yourself,” was the boy’s confident answer, “before
another year passes.”
There was a look into the now vacant store room just forward of the
engine compartment and the perspiring party made its way down the
landing ladder. Ned spoke to his journalist guest.
“Mr. Stewart,” the editor immediately announced. “You are under Mr.
Napier’s orders until you receive other instructions.”