by Joan Clark
CHAPTER XXII
WINGING WESTWARD
At midnight Hal Dane made his decision. He snatched a few hours' sleep.Then in the early dawning he went out to inspect the Mazarin Fieldrunway. Not so good--ground wet and heavy with days of drenching rain!But as the downpour seemed scheduled to continue indefinitely, thingscould only get worse instead of better. So--well, it might as well benow!
In spite of the foreboding, heavy weather, Hal Dane's heart was light.The past days of indecision had sat like a burden upon his soul, and nowthat his mind was finally and firmly made up, he suddenly went ecstatic,happy beyond all measure.
He caught himself whistling as he gave his plane its last thoroughlooking over. It seemed to be in perfect shape. Whew! What a beauty itwas! He slid an affectionate hand along its polished length as the mentrundled it out into the field. There he slung aboard his provisions andwater, climbed in and gave the signal for the blocks to be knocked away.
The motor roared and the plane started down the runway.
"Wish I were going too," yelled the red-headed McGinnis as he racedalongside.
"Wish so--" Hal's words were lost in the thud of the motor. The machinelabored forward, gathering speed slowly. Wet, muddy ground and the lastload of fuel seemed to have rooted it to earth. Would it never rise? Wasthis splendid attempt to meet disaster in the very beginning?
At last the heavily-loaded Wind Bird began to lift gallantly, rose tobarely clear the tree line, then zoomed up into the sky.
Even at this unearthly hour, a horde of spectators milled on the groundbelow, their hearts' hopes rising with this brilliant attempt of youngDane. For the young fellow, the shyest of heroes, who had run away fromhis first taste of fame, had overnight fired the enthusiasm of the wholenation.
As though lifted on the shouts of the onlookers, the lone flyer in hisWind Bird took the air and went up, up into the heights.
He leveled out for a while to get speed, then rose another thousandfeet.
Hal Dane had taken off at a little after six o'clock in the morning, andhe had headed out with his back directly to the rising sun--or at leastwith his back to the place where the sun would have been seen rising ifthe cloud banks had not hidden it.
In a few moments, the skyscrapers of San Francisco, looking white andspectral, were swallowed up in the gray-brown pall that enshrouded theGolden Gate. Hal's last picture of them was of mere tower tops thatseemed to hang like a magic city in the clouds. A forerunner this, ofthe mirages he was to encounter later on, when magic cities would seemto rise before his tired eyes, then crumble away among the clouds.
Below him swept an immensity of ocean, the color of ashes in the mistyhaze. Nowhere was there any mark to guide him. From now on he must relyentirely upon his instruments, and Hal began to keep a wary eye upon hisinductor compass.
That compass was the most remarkable of all the splendid equipmentfeatures of the Wind Bird. It was based upon the principle of therelation between the earth's magnetic field and the magnetic fieldgenerated in the airplane. When the plane's course had been set so thatthe needle registered zero on this compass, any deviation would causethe needle to swing away from zero in the direction of the error. Suchan error could be corrected by flying the plane with the needle at thesame distance on the other side of zero, and for the same time that theerror had been committed. This would set the aircraft's nose back on hercourse again.
When well out over the ocean, he took calculations and set his coursedue northwest. He was figuring on covering the ocean in acrescent-shaped sweep that would have the advantage of sighting theAleutian chain of land points at better than midway, and it was a coursethat he hoped would send him well within the range of certain aircurrents.
As his course steadied, the roar of his ninefold engine assumed apleasing grandeur, like music flung out over these far spaces. The motorwas working to perfection, humming along under its mighty load. It was acomfort to know too that every pound of fuel burned meant a lighteningof the weight and an added capacity for speed, more speed.
In a flare of fire, the sunlight burst through the gray world of clouds.The rainstorm was lifting. Weather conditions that had frowned so on histake-off were changing to a golden glory to speed him onward. But HalDane knew all too well that this fickle glory of sunshine could changeback to black thunderheads in the twinkling of an eye.
To the right of his plane, he caught a glimpse of a faint dark blurredline. That could be the west coast, the land of America that he wasspeeding away from now in a northwestern diagonal.
Was this blurred glimpse all that he'd ever see of land again? Who couldtell? He might land safe on those other shores, and again, a hundreddifferent causes could crash his gallant sky ship into the gray waves,to sink eventually to the ocean bottom.
Hal squared back his shoulders, lifted his head. He would force darkthoughts out of his mind. There must only be room in his plans for hope.
He sent the throttle up a notch. More speed! His heart caught the liftof power from the throbbing motor. Exultation, and the wild spirit ofthe Vikings surged through his veins. His Norse ancestors had crossed anocean in a frail sea skiff. And now he, like some atom adrift in theimmense wastes of the sky, was daring the air currents on man-madewings. Hal Dane felt a thrill of power and glory shoot through him. Itwas speed on to whatever the end was, to death, or to victory!
For this longest of long distance flights where every extra poundcounted against success, Hal had stripped his plane to the barestnecessities of weight in food and equipment. Then at the last minute hehad carried things, light as air, yet weighty in a certain kind ofcontent. God-speed telegrams from his mother, from the faculty of hisold flying school, from Colonel Wiljohn! There was also a yellow slip oftelegraphic paper bearing him congratulations and word that hisgyroscope had won the Onheim Prize. The hopes and thoughts of hisfriends were going with him on this wild venture.
All unknown to him, the thoughts of a nation were following the WindBird. A ship that had glimpsed a flyer going up coast had radioed wordback. Other messages swept through the air from a far-out fishing fleetwhere the lone flyer crossed human sea trails again. This word wasbulletined in theaters and picture show houses, was on a million lips.Wind Bird had gone thus far. How was the weather? Could he make it?
At midday the lone flyer checked up position and headed out over thePacific in a more westerly direction. Far to the north of him would besituated Sitka, behind him should lie Vancouver--it was in this airrange that he, on preliminary explorations, had located a great currentof the wind that flowed west in the heights.
If he and the Wind Bird could efficiently ride this current it wouldmean speed such as he had heretofore only dreamed of, would mean timeand fuel-saving in the great Trans-Pacific crossing.
In preparation for his chill rise up into the earth's stratosphere, orupper air, Hal Dane snugly closed the throat of his heavily padded,leather-covered suit of down and feathers. Fur-lined moccasins over hisboots, and a leather head mask lined with fur, which with the oxygenmask entirely covered the face, completed the costume. His goggles hadalready been specially prepared with an inside coating of anti-freezinggelatine, supposed to prevent the formation of ice to minus sixtydegrees Fahrenheit. Ice on the inside of the goggles would be atemporary blind, as Hal well knew.
Worse than the terrible cold was the lack of oxygen he would have tocombat up in the heights of rarefied air. But a marvelous artificial aidhad been prepared for this also. In the Wind Bird was installed aspecial oxygen apparatus that could furnish him a strong flow oflife-giving gas through a tube adjusted to the mouthpiece of his helmet.With minute care, Hal examined every section of his two separate systemsof gaseous oxygen, the main system, and the emergency system. He wantedto be very sure that nothing was left to mere luck. Other men before himhad ridden high. But today, he must ride the highest stratosphere if hewere to really explore the vast speeding wind river that his othersearching
s had merely tapped.
Hal Dane began to climb. By degrees he forced the Wind Bird up, thecurved vacuum of her specially-built wing meeting the air-pull fromabove to aid in a mighty lifting.
Up he went in great sweeping spirals, ever mounting higher and higher,the engine of the Wind Bird working beautifully. The altimeter told himhe was at the height of seventeen thousand feet,--now he had reachedeighteen, nineteen, twenty thousand! His ship was still climbing, actingbeautifully. But he, Hal Dane, was not acting right. In the face oftriumph, his whole sky world went suddenly gray and dreary, he felt aqueer lassitude, and a slowing up of faculties.
The oxygen! In the excitement, he had forgotten to draw on it!
With a languid movement, he thrust the tube into his mask. A few deepbreaths and his gray world brightened. More oxygen, more,--and he hadchanged back into his old self, ready to think and act quickly.
Now he was entering into a favorable wind that sped him in the rise. Hewent to thirty thousand feet.
Thirty-four thousand! Thirty-five! Thirty-six!
The cold was now intense. For all his furred garments, there was noshutting out the frigidity. It ate to the very marrow. But Hal Dane'sheart was hot within him, burning in its thrill of exultation. He wasriding thirty-eight thousand feet above the earth, and riding with thewhizzing speed of a bullet shot from a mighty gun. His plane, capable oftwo hundred miles an hour, had slid into a two-hundred-mile wind here inthe upper air, and it was hurtling forward at the appalling speed offour hundred miles per hour.
Speed--speed! Hal Dane's heart throbbed hot and wild. He was ridingfaster than ever mortal rode before, swooping before the mad currents ofthe river of the wind. The crossing of the great Pacific will now be amatter of hours--not a matter of days. And his the Viking sky boat thatfirst dared the fierce gale of the wind path!
The gale he was riding gathered power. His speedometer mountederratically, jerking up records of additional fives and tens of miles.Ten--twenty, thirty--four hundred and forty miles per hour.
A curious vibration of his engine startled him. But he drove away allthoughts of danger. The mileage was a magnet that held his eyes. Speed,speed! Riding high and fast! The sky was his height limit. He wasreeling off a record. He must hold to it, must speed on.
Riding higher and faster than any human since creation! Thrillingthought--thrilling thought--thrilling thought--his head was knockingqueerly. He leaned forward, and the instruments in the cockpit becamedim and shaky. He was drifting into a semi-delirium from which he couldnot seem to rouse himself. His mind refused to focus upon what it mustdo.
His dulling senses caught a thud-thud-thud! Engine vibration so greatthat it seemed the machine must tear apart!