CHAPTER XXI

CALL OF THE WINDS

Like one come back to the present from a far journey into eternity, Hal Dane sat for a space within the gyroscope's cockpit. He hardly heard the tumult that was men battering down the locked door to the tower hangar. Next thing he knew, many hands were lifting him out of the squat machine that had made its triumphal straight-rise, and its equally triumphant down-drop.

Fuz McGinnis, red hair on end, eyes blazing with excitement, was the first to get to him.

"By Jehoshaphat J-J-Jumping--man, you did it!" Fuz howled incoherently, "but I wouldn't live through another t-t-ten minutes like that--not to be President, even!"

Then Mr. Rankin, representative of the great Onheim Prize Fund, was pumping his hand up and down, "Congratulations, Hal Dane! The award is bound to be yours. There's not the slightest doubt that your extraordinary performance has beaten every other safety record set here today. Things'll have to be confirmed at headquarters though--will be letting you know."

Once Hal was outside the hangar, the surging crowd pressed close. He was the center of a shouting, thrilling excitement. Newspaper men fought their way to him. Questions were hurled at him thick and fast.

Could that thing be counted on always to rise straight-up, and to sit back down just like that, behind a wall, or a steeple, or anything? Hal rather thought it could, considering the flood test, and now this shooting up out of a tower.

That being the case, did he realize that this invention was likely to revolutionize the airplane business? Had he caught the vision of what the gyroscope could do in the way of taking off and landing on a mere roof top? Had he any plans for the now very possible city-to-be which would have roof-top terminals on all its down-town buildings?

Heavens, how these reporter fellows could shoot off questions! Hal answered, "Yes, and yes again, and, well no, he hadn't drawn any plans of future cities--he'd been too busy drawing plans of airplanes--" And then Hal ducked for cover.

"Here, Fuz, help me get out of this," he whispered, "there's somewhere else I've got to be, now--right away!"

So Fuz had slid into the cockpit of his own Wiljohn biplane, warmed up the motor, and held the machine in readiness behind the long mechanics' hall near the center of the grounds. Ten minutes later, Hal Dane entered one door of this building, went out by another door, flung a leg over the cockpit, and was in beside Fuz. In the next moment, he was riding high above the throng, fleeing from fame, on the way to the "somewhere else"--and that was the Mazarin Hangars on the city outskirts. Here was housed his own plane, his Wind Bird, that he'd not yet seen in all its completeness.

He felt light of heart, almost giddy with his sense of freedom. Out there on the exhibition grounds by his successful demonstration of the Wiljohn-Dane gyroscope, he had paid his debt to the man that had most befriended him, Colonel Wiljohn.

As they landed out in Mazarin, a man in the Wiljohn uniform, who had been pacing back and forth before one of the low, single-plane hangars, waved to them, then turned about and quickly unlocked the wide, sliding doors.

Hal sped forward in quick, nervous strides, but paused on the threshold. Now that he was here, he was almost afraid to look. They had completed the ship in his absence. Suppose mistakes had been made, suppose--

His heart seemed thundering up into his very ears, his face was white and strained as he plunged into the semi-darkness of the hangar. The attendant slipped in behind him, switched on wall lights, overhead lights.

"A-ah!" It was a long, exultant, in-drawn breath of ecstasy. Hal Dane stared as though he could never get enough of looking.

The ship--his Wind Bird--she was a beauty! Slender crimson body, silver wing, every inch of her streamlined to split the wind like an arrow!

Slenderly beautiful--but what strength there was here! There was a compactness to this winged creation that only an exact knowledge of certain sciences could give. In the peculiar curved shape of the wing surface lay the solution to one of the deepest hidden secrets of flight. The old flat shape of airplane wings had depended entirely upon air pressure from below for the rise. The peculiar curve to the Wind Bird's silvered wing would take full advantage of a thrice greater power--the air's suction pull from above. The material in the wing was in itself a marvel, laminated strata, light in the extreme, yet almost as tough as iron.

Engine streamlined, as well as body! To the unpracticed eye, the modernistic Conqueror-Eisel engine might have seemed absurd in its smallness and its simplicity. But Hal Dane knew from long experimentation that in its simplicity lay the fundamental reliability of this new type engine. He spun the motor and sat back on his heels to listen to the smooth gentle hum, music to his mechanic's ear.

Everything was as he had planned it--great fuel tank for the high-powered oil he would burn instead of gasoline, another tank to hold the liquid, life-giving oxygen he would need in the heights. The latest life-saving devices were installed: radio sending and receiving apparatus, flares, rockets, detachable compass, and a rubber lifeboat in addition to those appliances that, in an emergency, could convert the plane wing itself into a sea-going raft.

It was Hal's plan that nothing that could be humanly prepared for should be left to mere chance.

The need for such care had already been driven home to him by the tragic fate of two of his gallant rivals in this great flight. Just the day before he arrived in San Francisco, young Randall and the veteran, Ed West, in their great trimotor had made their start at winging the Pacific for the Valiant Prize. Either overload, or some fault of mechanism had caused the great plane to fail in a rise above the cliffs. Both pilot and mechanic had crashed to death.

Jammed throttle had set another competitor adrift on the sea edge--where, luckily for him, there were boats a-plenty for the rescue.

With these hazards in mind, Hal kept testing and retesting every part of his equipment and mechanism. He bunked that night in the hangar, and with the morning was again at his work. Terrific coastal rains set in. But snug within the closed cockpit of the Wind Bird, Hal joyously challenged the downpour.

At the first flight test, the silver and crimson ship rode the rain clouds with a thrilling swiftness. For the second flight, loaded with all the weight that an ocean flyer needs must bear, the Wind Bird labored somewhat in the rise, found her speed more slowly. That initial slowness was a thing that had to be borne with. Compensation would come in the continuous quickening of speed as each hour of flight burned up its quota of fuel, and, degree by degree, lifted the weight.

For two days of rain, Hal continued his tests. In between periods of work he flung himself down to sleep like a log, letting nature repair the nerve strain of that long nightmare of flood rescue work.

Sleep was about his only weapon, too, for dodging newspaper men. Reporters were fine, friendly fellows, all right,--but, well, Hal didn't want to talk. What he wanted was action, to be off.

All his life seemed to have been leading up to this one event--his take-off for his viking flight on the winds of the ocean. And here was the take-off held up by rainstorm, an endless one it appeared.

Along the Pacific coast, five other flyers were ready too, awaiting weather conditions for the great journey.

Storm and fog kept Hal Dane on edge for another twelve hours. Then he decided to wait no longer.

Why couldn't one take-off in a rainstorm? No worse than running into rainstorms out over the waters! On such a journey a flyer had to face all kinds of weather anyway.