by Joan Clark
CHAPTER III
FLYING HOPE
Interborough got wind of the near-robbery, the wild sky-ride, thesubsequent crash of a great plane on the outskirts of Hillton. A hordeof reporters swarmed over to interview the crashees, to get pictures ofthem and the wreck. For the first time in his life, Hal Dane saw himselfstaring, with the usual garbled, wood-cut expression of newspaperpictures, from the front page of a metropolitan paper. But if thepicture was poor, Harry Nevin, the young reporter for the InterboroughStar, had at least wielded a kindly pencil. In spite of the crash, hegave Hal Dane credit for "unusual wing sense."
In reality as well as in the smeary newspaper picture the wrecked planeshowed up as a dismal mess. To the uninitiated eye, this grotesque thingwith its tail in the air and its nose in the mud had all the appearancesof having flown its last flight. But when mechanics from Interborough,with Raynor to direct them, began to dig out the ship, it was found thatthe actual damage was done only to the propeller, although the fuselageand wings were covered with mud and some of the wing fabric would haveto be patched and "doped."
"It's that ditch that did it," consoled Raynor, going over the variousaspects of the "cracked-up" landing with Hal. "In the night thatgrass-covered ditch couldn't have looked much different from the rest ofthe field. But a ditch for a landing place can turn most any sky businto a bronco-bucking affair. Nearly every pilot mixes in with somethingof the kind sooner or later. Settling in a little gully out in Texasabout seven years ago gave me a wallop in the bean that I won't beforgetting any time soon," and Raynor ducked his head to show Hal ajagged white scar that persistently parted his black hair unevenly atthe crown.
As soon as a new propeller could be shipped out and adjusted, one of theflyer's friends from the air mail route was coming down to pilot offboth Raynor and his ship.
So the next day, in spite of a few rolling, murky wind clouds in theeast, Hal determined to do some gliding on his homemade apparatus. Hewanted this chance to get a real aviator's criticism and advice on theboard and cloth mechanisms with which he had to satisfy his longings forair flight.
Hal Dane might have wing sense, but he had no money with which to buyengine-powered wings. All he could do was patch up contrivances out ofthe crude materials that lay to hand.
Long ago Hillton had ceased to throw up its hands and fall in a faintover that "crazy Dane boy" scudding along gully edges propelled by apair of sheets stretched on some sticks. In fact, Hillton had grown soused to Hal's experimenting that by now the village just accepted himand his stunts as a matter of course.
But with the famous Rex Raynor present and evincing interest in suchthings, the whole of Hillton turned out to watch this new glidingattempt of Hal's.
Instead of rolling out the battered little glider that reposed in themain workshop, Hal, with considerable help from all the small boys ofHillton, pushed back a section of the opposite wall, revealing that thebarn had a second long room--the harness or storage room of the olddays. From out of this, scraping and screaking along the ground on itskeel skid, was hauled a white monstrosity--a huge thing of wood andcloth, of wires and bars and levers.
Hilltonians who hadn't seen the latest of Hal's handicraft couldn'tresist a laugh at the ungainly monster with long, warped-looking stretchof wing.
"Gangway, gangway!" shouted a youngster. "Here comes theWillopus-Wallopus!"
"Willopus, your foot!" snorted Uncle Telemachus. He himself might laugha bit at Hal, but he wasn't going to stand for anybody else doing it. Hesilenced the mouthy boy with a glare from his fiery old eyes. "Hi, don'tyou know a wind bird when you see one?"
Wind bird, indeed! To the uninitiated, this cloth contraption stretchedon hay-bale wire and sprucewood sticks, hauled out of its lair on itsscreakily protesting keel skid, looked more like some waddlingantediluvian from the prehistoric past.
But Rex Raynor seemed to find nothing comical in the wind bird. Her slowprogress while being dragged to the brow of Hogback Hill gave him achance to study her every line. To an aviator used to the exquisitefinish and polish of a modern factory-built sky boat, Hal's contraptionoffered a contrast of a rather sketchy aircraft fuselage. A littleboard, an upright post, some slim sprucewood longerons,--that was thefuselage, if one could call it a fuselage! But for all its homemaderoughness, there was an interesting compactness in the way the boy hadbraced his few wires and uprights down to a "V," converging at the boardseat. The one wing was a long cloth-covered affair of wood strips andwires--streamlined after a fashion, for it was narrower at the tips thanin the center, and thinner at the back edge than at the front edge. Thelongerons ended in rudimentary elevators and rudder, connected by wiresto a pair of pedals set before the board seat that was fastened at thenose of the fuselage. A broomstick control stuck up before the seat too,and wires hitched it to the wings.
"The boy's worked out something, eh?" grunted Uncle Tel, shufflingrheumatically alongside of Raynor, who seemed bent on studying everyinch of the curious, lumbering craft. "Got some technique all his own,eh?"
"Cat's back!" snorted the flyer, "but I'll say the kid's got technique!"He laid a hand on one of the hinged sections that formed the back ofeach wing tip. "Look at those ailerons he worked out on the wings! He'scombined the idea of the German Taube and the French Nomet in that winglift. Where did he get it?"
"Got it out of his head--and from watching birds fly, too, I reckon,"said Uncle Tel. "That boy, he's always snatching time to sit out here onthe top of old Hogback Hill, watching buzzards sail, crows flap, and howthe lark gives a little spring when she sails up into the sky. Lookyhere, see that sort of spring, set there where the glider rests on itsskid? That's what Buddy calls his 'lark spring up.' It helps him getgliding in a shorter run than he could before he put it there."
The glider and its escort had about reached the crest of the hill now.Raynor stepped a little apart and stood looking down over the lay of theland below him.
"Um--valleys and bare rolling hills," he muttered to himself. "The sortof terrain below to make air currents that rise and flow. The kid's agood picker of gliding country. Reckon though he's been experimentingand studying out this air current business for himself. He's not exactlythe kind to leave everything to mere blind chance."
Hal Dane jammed his old cap down on his head nearly to the ears, stood amoment beside his glider. He was a tall, fair boy--fair at least if hehadn't been so outrageously tanned. His eyes had the Norse hint of "bluefire" to them, like the blue fire of the ice glint of the far north. Fora fact, the boy had more than a hint of the old Norse Viking look to himas he stood there beside his wind ship.
His mother, in the fore-edge of the crowd, hands nervously twisting butchin up and eyes steady, might have been the mother of a Viking. Only,instead of watching a son take boat for unknown sea currents, thismother was watching a son mount the even more unknown air currents.
Ducking down to get in under the overhanging wing, Hal seated himself onthe board, rammed his back against the upright post that formed the mainmember of his skeleton fuselage, then doubled up his long legs to setfeet on the pair of pedals.
It was rather good sport, this starting Hal off on a flight. The Hilltonyoungsters had plenty of experience in their end of the matter--whichwas the pushing and pulling off. On this occasion, when there were somany onlookers, it was a matter to be fought over. Fuz McGinnis, actingas master of ground ceremonies, straightened affairs out and selectedthose that had already had some experience in pulling off.
At a signal from Hal, half a dozen fellows, three to the left and threeto the right, walked away with the ends of a rope that led back in a "V"to the front of the wind bird. At the tip of one wing a tall boy trottedalong to hold the wings level. Behind the wind bird, Fuz and anotherfellow came ambling along, pulling back slightly on a tail rope.
At twenty steps down the hill, Hal shouted, "Run!"
The contraption, which had been slipping along the ground on its keelsk
id, rose a few feet as the runners picked up speed.
Ten paces more, and the pilot crouching up there under the wing yelled,"Turn loose! Let her go!"
Already the fellow at the wing had stood away. At the yell "Let her go!"the others dropped ropes, which fell free from the down-pointed hooksthey had been merely held against by pressure. Now with the back pullrelaxed, the glider shot upward and forward like a stone hurled from acatapult.
Wedged between some spruce sticks under a stretch of cloth, Hal was offon his motorless flight.
When on the ground this contraption of wood and wires had seemed anungainly, waddling freak. But now as it soared upward on air currents inits sky-element, it swooped with a marvel of grace.
Instead of a short flight and a mere slide down a wind hill, the boybegan to twist and turn to take advantage of every rising current of airso as to ascend to a greater height than that from which he had started.
Though he couldn't hear it, the crowd below him let out a gasp ofadmiration. Rex Raynor stood, head bent back so as not to miss amovement of the rider of the wind.
Already the wind bird had climbed a hundred feet above the take-off; itbanked again for another climb. Now it circled, swept in a series ofloops, and began to drift easily down a landing at the foot of thestarting hill.
Then through the valley swept a gust from the wind clouds that had beenrolling up all day. Like a leaf the lazily dropping wind machine wascaught up in the blast, swept high again, hurled this way and that,dipping crazily.
"Gosh!" shrieked Fuz McGinnis in a bleat of terror. "Oh, my gosh! He'sgoing to head on his stand!" Fuz always said his words hind part beforewhen he got excited.