CHAPTER XXV

HIS NAME ACROSS THE SKY

Deep in the night, and in a dense fog, Hal Dane hovered over a faint earthly glow that he felt must be Tokio, capital city of Japan. Hours ago he had straightened the wide deflection of his course that had taken him astray over the edge of the long peninsula of Kamchatka.

As he checked up again by chart and map, his wearying senses told him this must be it--the Tokio that he had crossed thousands upon thousands of miles of ocean to reach.

He drifted down to four thousand feet altitude. From here flood lights and beacons were dimly visible, more assurance that he must be over the imperial city of the Orient's most progressive civilization.

A thrill shot through Hal Dane, lifting the great weariness of the forty hours' continuous flying. Aches and chill and battering of storms were forgotten now that the fight was ending. He had done what he had set out to do--crossed the greatest of the oceans in a single non-stop flight.

His fingers began to tap an incessant query on his sending-radio outfit, "Landing field? Landing field? Landing field?"

And suddenly he was in touch with answers winging their way up to him from the ground below--"Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!" Over and over he got those two words--"Tokio Asahi!"

He was in touch with humanity again! Men on this Japanese land knew he was winging his way above them. Men were answering his call. "Tokio Asahi"--there it came again. What did it mean?

His radio was bringing him words, but they meant nothing to him. His only comfort lay in the fact that men knew he was here in the air, and that probably they were making some preparation for his landing.

It seemed to him that now a glimmer of flares burned brighter in a certain spot. He hoped these marked a landing field, hoped also that radio landing beacons would be here to respond to the visual radio receiver on his instrument board.

Down he came in long sweeping circles, seeking a place to land. A wrong landing could mean death, not only to him, but to hapless ones he might crash upon down there on the fog-blanketed earth. For dreadful sickening seconds, apprehension rode him. His heart seemed clutched in iron fingers, his face was white under the strain as his eyes watched the instrument board.

Ah! they were quivering--those two strange little reeds that by their vibration told the good news of radio beacons waiting down there to help him make his landing. With a joyous surge of relief in his heart, Hal Dane began his long, slanting, final downward plunge. An over-quivering of the left reed told him that he was diverging too much on that side. With a quick swerve of the airplane, he put both reeds back into a balancing quiver, and thus followed their direction straight down the path of the beacon to a landing.

He had landed! He was in Japan!

The young flyer had been so engrossed in blind flying to a perfect landing by instruments alone, that it came as a shock to him to look out of his machine's window and see the huge crowd that awaited him on this Oriental landing field. The throng had scattered somewhat to make room for the ship's downward plunge.

Hal Dane thrust a blond head out of the window. "I'm Hal Dane," he said simply, "in the Wind Bird. We--we made it, I reckon."

At that, the crowd swept in. They had no more idea of what he was saying than he had had of their "Tokio Asahi" that had been radioed up to him. But the boy's smile and his quietness of manner had won them.

Radios had been busy for two days in Japan, as well as in other parts of the world. From the time Hal Dane had left America, radio had winged its messages back and forth to various parts of the civilized universe.

The phenomenal courage of a boy alone flying the greatest ocean, had stirred the heart of Japan. And now that Hal Dane, Viking of the Sky, had made his landing, Japan set him high on her throng's shoulders.

It was a shouting, laughing, good-natured crowd, gay with the colors of Japanese girls' sashed kimonos mingling with the black of more sedate native costumes, and with the trim modern uniforms of Japan's host of young army flyers.

In the first wild rush, the plucky American aviator was fairly mobbed. The shouting, howling throng, wild with joy and excitement, hauled him clear of his plane. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, American fashion, or even just touch the garments of this one that had flown the skies. Trim, sturdy members of the imperial air force, got to him, lifted him upon their khaki shoulders. Thus he was borne through the streets of old, old Tokio where the automobile and the jinrikisha mingled as unconcernedly as did the old-time temples and tea shops mingle with eight-story skyscrapers and picture theaters.

Behind him, edging the landing field, rose a fine modern building. Hal Dane waved an inquiring hand at it.

"Tokio Asahi!" came the surprising answer that was shouted from many throats.

Hal nodded his head as if he understood, but puzzlement seethed in his brain. What did this queer shout mean that greeted him everywhere, even met him in the air before landing?

As the triumphal procession made its way down the street, newsboys, carrying bundles of papers, tore through the swarming crowds, ringing bells, flying small flags, and shouting loudly as they waved these "extras" just off the press.

Their shout floated back to Hal with an irritatingly familiar refrain, "Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!"

And suddenly, from his perch on men's shoulders, that lifted him hero-wise above the crowd--Hal Dane burst into boyish laughter. He had it, that "Tokio Asahi,"--it was the name of Japan's greatest newspaper--the newspaper with over a million circulation, and with a most modern of modern air mail deliveries. That was evidently the Asahi's own great landing field he had arrived above, so naturally it was the name Asahi that had been radioed up to him.

Well, the Asahi was certainly an up and coming publication. As young Dane peered down from his place at the second army of newsboys speeding with flag and bell advertisement through the mob, he saw with astonishment that his own picture already smudgily adorned these latest extras. And men and women, gone wild over this young conqueror of the skies, were scrambling for these pictures.

At last the efficient Tokio police rescued Hal Dane from the rough-and-tumble admiration of the street crowds. Somehow they got him free and rushed him into a building. And here Hal found himself shaking hands with Charles MacVeagh, American Ambassador to Japan. Here he met Baron Giichi Tanaka, Premier of Japan; Suzuki, the Home Minister; Mitsuchi, head of Finance Department, and other notable figures of the Japanese capital,--statesmen whose names were known all over the world.

Although he was now in a daze of weariness, young Dane forced himself to answer quietly and simply their many questions. To hold the fascinated interest of such great men was an overwhelming honor. But something besides honor was overwhelming the gallant aviator. Sleep, sleep--how he ached for it!

Then next thing, he was stretching out his weary bones in the deep comfort of a bed and getting his first real rest in two days and the better part of two nights.

When he at last awoke, he found that in all reality he had written his name across the sky! Newspapers in all the cities of the world were giving pages of space to his marvelous flight. Telegrams of congratulation swamped him in ten thousand yellow flutters of good wishes. Crowds surrounded the walls of the American Embassy begging the "honorable one" but to show himself. Tokio outdid herself to pay him honor.

"All Japan breathes a welcome to the great flyer of the skies" were the headlines of a newspaper. And all Japan extended him uncounted courtesies. There was an endless round of processions and receptions in his honor. He was introduced to the romance of the symbolic "No" dance, the dainty tea ceremony, the elaborate Kabuki Drama, fruit of thirty centuries of culture and tradition. He must see the royal wrestlers, and the strange sword-dance of old Japan.

On a fete day, he had the tremendous honor of riding the streets of Tokio in a great, closed, red Rolls-Royce, seated beside His Highness Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. And seeing the rider of the skypath seated with their own beloved Son of the Sun, all that Japanese throng kneeled. Long after the crimson limousine had passed, the crowd still held its awed position.

For a week, Hal Dane "saw" Japan from sacred Fuiji's mountain crest to the beautiful, sinister hot lakes of Kannawa.

Then America refused to wait longer for her idol to return. Again the hordes of telegrams began pouring in.

There was one from Hal Dane's mother, that simply said, "We knew you could do it--come back to us now."

Vallant, the millionaire giver of aviation prizes, cabled, "You have won it. Your thirty-five thousand is waiting for you."

From the President of the United States came a radio message, "Your victory is all victory--a peaceful victory. You have bound nations together with a bond of friendship."

And still they flooded in--telegrams, cablegrams, radiograms. From the first, America had gone wild with joy and pride over the matchless flight. And now with the passing days, America grew frantic, would be no longer denied. "Come back--You belong to us--America awaits you!" was the thousandfold message from his homeland.

Under this urge, Hal Dane left sightseeing in Japan to be completed on some other visit and saw to it that his beloved Wind Bird was carefully crated for shipment. Then the young Viking of the Sky boarded a great steamer for another crossing of the Pacific--this time for a journey straight into the hearts of his own people.