CHAPTER XX

PRISONED WINGS

In the days that followed, Hal Dane plugged steadily on with his share of the rescue program, until at last the crest of the flood had passed and the waters began to recede.

After a late supper each night, he paid his regular visit to the field hospital to see how the Wiljohns, mother and child, were getting on.

Tonight, as he tapped on the board and canvas door, the nurse stepped out.

"Yes, the change for the better has come," she said, "for a while we thought it was a matter of hours before life would go. Both had marvelous reserve strength though, and they've rallied surprisingly--are out of danger now. But," and the nurse smiled, "it'll be a good while before they'll be ready for another such speed trip as you gave them. That was a wonderful rescue you made, Mr. Dane."

Hal squirmed uncomfortably. "Just came in the day's work. Anybody'd have done it--"

"Nonsense!" A heavy voice boomed in. "Nonsense, Hal Dane! I'll tell you for the tenth time you're the only man alive that could have handled that gyroscope, and done such a feat. Finest thing I ever heard of--finest, absolutely--" Colonel Wiljohn's boom choked suspiciously and he blew his nose vigorously.

The nurse slipped back into the canvas-walled barracks that housed her patients.

"And Hal," the Colonel had himself in control again, "Hal, boy, I want you to know that even in my first selfish grief, I didn't entirely forget your hopes and plans. Days ago I wired to my men at the Axion factories to speed the finishing work on your two planes, and to rush them to San Francisco. Our mechanics will have everything ready for the demonstration at the Onheim Contest, if you get there in time. And whether you tackle that Onheim Contest for me or not, isn't what really matters--the main thing is, you'll find your Wind Bird ready for you and your great flight."

Hal's head seemed to whirl in an ecstasy. He had suppressed his every longing till he became a being that snatched a few hours' sleep, scouted floods with tensed nerves as long as a shred of daylight lasted, and plunked onto a cot for a minimum of rest. Now in the twinkling of an eye, the suppression was off.

With the speed he knew how to get out of a plane, he could be in Denver at mid-morning tomorrow, and on to San Francisco in the early hours of that night. After that he could sleep a round of the clock and still be in time for the Onheim trials.

Instead of going back in the gyroscope dog plane that he had brought down and put to such good use, Colonel Wiljohn turned over to him one of his speed monoplanes, the fastest thing that had come into the flood country.

For all of Hal's feverish haste to be off, delays of various kinds held him for several hours. The monoplane, which had seen considerable service, had to be fueled and groomed for the long diagonal across more than half the continent. Friends that he had made in these grueling times of day-and-night labor hunted him up to congratulate him on the work he had put over and to wish him God-speed for the future.

By the time Hal had stepped into the cockpit of the speed plane, it seemed that the whole population of Tent-City-on-the-Flood-Edge had turned out to do him honor.

Colonel Wiljohn wrung his hand fervently.

"Your coming down here has been of more worth to me than I can ever put into mere words," he said. "And I only wish I could be there when you start the great flight."

"I wish that, too," Hal reached a hand down to his friend.

The motor roared, the blocks were knocked away, and the plane whizzed across the field and soared into the night sky. The great shout of the crowd seemed to rise with it.

Hal's mood was as bright as the moonlit heavens he sailed across. A hundred miles! And still another hundred! He was speeding like some gigantic bird. His instruments marked a hundred and twenty miles an hour. He was fairly eating up space.

Before midnight he had crossed the Mississippi waters unwinding like a great ribbon below the lights of Vicksburg.

Then flying slowed down. A dense fog rolled up about him. The moon was smothered out above. Below him, disappeared the scattered lights that meant farm homes and the widespread glow of city illuminations. He was alone, shrouded in a gray, dripping world with only his instruments to guide him.

As for direction, he had little fear of going astray. He was well used to setting a course by his compass. The chief need was to hold to altitude so as to clear the loftiest peak that might be in his path. In the heights he hoped to find a lessening of the mist, but the damp grayness was here as everywhere else on this night.

As Hal Dane felt his way on into the night, eyes glued to the instrument board, there burst into his senses a sudden roar zooming through the fog.

The roar grew nearer. Another plane was riding high in the fog, and coming toward him like a shot out of a shell.

Hal's first instinct was to rise higher to slip over and avoid collision. His hand was on the pressure, when a quick thought sped like lightning through his brain--to rise high, that was natural instinct, that was what the other flyer would do, of course. There'd be two riding high, straight to a head-on crash!

With a slip of wings, Hal began to drop. But his reasoning had played him wrong here. A sound rushing upon him told that the other flyer, disregarding instinct, had dived also.

Through a rent in the fog, Hal had a sudden awful glimpse of a dark, spreading mass riding him down. Like lightning, he shot to the left. In the other plane, another master hand veered the controls all that was humanly possible. Instead of crashing into a death grip, these two mechanical birds of the night slid by each other with a mere scraping of wings.

For Hal Dane, though, that mere scrape was serious enough. At the shock of the other's passing blow, the whole monoplane trembled, and went limping on into the night with a bent wing that drooped dangerously.

After fifteen minutes of erratic flying, Hal had to take to ground. The fog had mercifully lifted somewhat. He coaxed the crippled plane on to the edge of a rosy glow that meant a town and landed on the outskirts of this.

Hal spent the rest of the night in trips back and forth from the town, in rousting out mechanics, hunting up tools and repair material, and in repairing the wing by lantern light.

At last he was able to glide up along the airways again. Instead of humming into Denver in mid-morning, as he had planned, it was deep into another night when he finally zoomed into the airport of that Colorado metropolis,--turned his plane over to competent mechanics, and stumbled for sleeping quarters.

Before dawn, he was under way again. This time luck was with him and he did the last thousand-mile lap of his journey in less than nine hours.

As it was, he arrived in San Francisco without even an hour's space between him and the great Onheim Safety Device try-out. No time for any rest for himself, no time for any preliminary testing of the splendid new gyroscope plane fresh from the skids of the Wiljohn factory. All he could do was give a thorough ground inspection of every part of this strange mechanism of flight that he had conceived, and that the Wiljohn factories had developed with the utmost care. There it stood--short, fixed wings, sturdy, black-enameled body, a silvered whirl of gyroscope wings above the fuselage. The strangest looking creation for flight man had ever invented! Strange looking--yes! But if it worked, it would be man's most forward step in safe flying!

It was perfect, just as he had planned it, from its geared motor to its curiously flexible wind blades. Exultation filled Hal Dane as he looked on this thing he had created.

It was an exultation that was short-lived though. When he went out to the exhibition grounds and saw the veritable trap that had been built for him to rise from, his heart went cold.

Through misunderstanding of the wording of Colonel Wiljohn's frantic telegraphic efforts to get all things ready for Hal Dane's flight demonstration, the Wiljohn workmen had built no platform for the plane to rise from as had been expected. Instead, they had built a sort of tower inclosure out of which the strange new gyroscope was to take its flight.

A white-faced Fuz McGinnis waited for Hal just outside the door of this tower that looked like a death trap. He hadn't seen Fuz for months now since demonstration flying had taken McGinnis into half the states of the Union on Wiljohn business.

The two young fellows gripped hands.

"News of this outlandish tower has spread like wildfire. I heard about it three states away, and came to see for myself. And now that I've seen--" McGinnis thumped a clenched fist against the wooden wall, "I--well, it's impossible! You mustn't undertake a rise out of that thing. It will kill you. Any kind of plane has got to have some leeway--"

"The gyroscope," Hal protested, "it's different, only--"

"Only this, it would batter you to death in those four walls!" Fuz began to lead Hal away.

A huge crowd jammed the exhibition grounds. Word of this new thing, this impossible flight of an airplane up out of the mouth of a tower, had spread far and wide. Men were in groups over the grounds, discussing, waving arms, arguing loudly. The words "Hal Dane--Wiljohn--gyroscope!" were on every lip.

Hal Dane's brain seethed. He hardly heard Fuz earnestly explaining how the affair could be safely managed--mere change of announcement--rise from ground instead of tower.

Better to make no rise at all, Hal's brain told him dully. After this hurrah of advertised excitement, a ground rise would be a flat fall for any interest whatever in the gyroscope. He was suddenly terribly tired. He'd been all of a million years without sleep, it seemed. He'd made a vast effort to get here--for nothing! Nobody'd be interested in the gyroscope anymore. And the Wiljohn Works needed the uplift of that gyroscope success, had banked on it. Mother and Uncle Tel--what was he going to do about them? He'd counted on making them comfortable out of this success. And now success had slipped from his grasp--his plans all gummed up by the foolish mistake of some workmen.

Disappointment and weariness were like some subtle drug, doping him into sleep as he stood here.

They were before the announcer's stand. Stupidly, Hal listened while McGinnis made some sort of explanation to the man holding the megaphone--all about changed plan, rise from ground--

"No! No!" Hal's voice was so loud that he startled himself. "Tell them--just what you'd planned to say!"

He wrenched out of the grasp of the startled Fuz McGinnis, and sped back toward the strange tower hangar. Men had already trundled the limp-bladed rotor machine in through the wide door at the base. Hal slipped in, closed and locked that door.

Fuz was a true friend, he meant well--but Fuz couldn't know what this thing meant to him. To fail at this would mean he could have no heart for that dream flight, his exploring of the ocean airpaths on the wings of the winds. A failure couldn't conquer the ocean! He'd either succeed at this--or die at it.

As Hal Dane leaned against the inner wall of that tower hangar in which the gyroscope plane was prisoned, he could hear the excited voice of the speaker of the day addressing the crowd through the great radio amplifier that carried his message to all the throng gathered there.

"It has been said," the voice of the speaker rang out, "it has been said that the climax of aviation had been reached when man learned to fly as well as birds. For birds most surely had the lead on man, having flown for something like twenty million years, while man has merely tried his wings out during about twenty years.

"Man learned of the birds. He patterned his flying machine after the principles of bird flight. He made the ailerons to shift at wing tip and thus to bank his machine in soaring, just as a bird lifts its wing tip. He patterned his light, very light framework after the bird's hollow bones. So man learned to fly like a bird.

"But now we are going to show you that man has learned to fly better than a bird.

"Think of the lark, she has to have space ten times her size to dart forward in before the lift that soars her aloft.

"Take the great South American condor with wing spread of ten feet. Put him in a twenty-foot pen and you have him a prisoner for life. The condor needs many times more than the twenty-foot space for his forward run before his great pinions will catch the air and lift him up into the skies.

"But man has surpassed the birds. He has learned to fly, and he has learned to rise without great space.

"Within this restricted tower is man's latest achievement, a gyroscope on a Wiljohn-Dane plane. With no space to dart or glide, this plane will rise straight up."

"Would it, oh, but would it?" Hal Dane's heart beat ice cold against his leather shirt. This same type motor had done its duty down there in the danger of the great Three-River Flood. It had risen from a tiny knoll, risen from a crumbling, flood-washed island. Even though over-burdened with human freight, it had risen almost straight into the air. But Hal Dane had been superman, then. Guided by superpower, he had hurled himself recklessly into the jaws of death to save life. In that time of thrilling awfulness, the great plane had answered to his every touch. Like some superhuman creation it had shot up from crumbling death, water death, swamp death.

But now, circumscribed by four man-made walls, wooden, spiritless things that made no real call to courage or feel of power--now would this great plane rise, respond to his will?

Not to rise straight up would mean death--a crashing, roaring piece of machinery battering against walls.

If only there had been a chance to try this tower out! But there had been no chance for anything, no chance to think, even.

With doom upon him, the young flyer slid into the cockpit of the squat, heavy plane.

Whir of motor, crazy tipping and swaying of the machine--then the thrill of power rushing into Hal Dane's veins. She was rising. She was answering his prayer. She was superbird, four walls could not prison her.

With a rushing whirl of her now stiffening gyroscope wings, the great machine lifted herself swiftly, steadily; rose in that amazing space of four wooden tower walls scarce ten feet distance from her machinery on any side.

Straight up--then away over the great, shouting concourse whirred the plane. Hal Dane, superbirdman, rode high in the skies, he swooped, he darted in an ecstasy of freedom of the air.

Then wheeling, circling till he hung above the tower with its four walls. He held position for a long minute, then under control dropped slowly, down, down, straight into the maw of the tower.