Read Ebook: Battling the Bighorn; or The Aeroplane in the Rockies by Sayler H L Harry Lincoln Nuyttens Josef Pierre Illustrator

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Ebook has 618 lines and 52096 words, and 13 pages

"We're clear of 'em by a mile," persisted the boy at the wheel. "Get back there and keep your eyes peeled," he shouted. "We might as well come down here."

The compartment was now inclined forward and to the left. Phil, only partly convinced, turned his head toward the opening in the floor when, with a crash of thunder, the clouds opened again to release new torrents of rain and the world below lay exposed beneath the flash of more lightning.

"Up!" yelled Phil. "Up!"

The warning was not necessary. Both boys caught their breaths at the sight below them. They were still skirting the edge of a pine forest and now the jagged trunks and branches of dying trees just below seemed reaching out to grasp them. Frank did not even think. As Phil's alarmed words reached him, both his feet and hands acted. There was a racking tremor--a shock--and then the car righted. It seemed to pause and then, like a relieved spring, shot forward. As it did so there was a new shock; the car curved forward as if held by something; a cracking snap below and then, as a new cry of alarm rose from Phil at the lookout door, once more the car was in a new equilibrium and making new headway.

"The port landing wheel caught a dead tree top," yelled Phil. "I told you to look out for that drift."

"Is the wheel gone?" was the only answer of the disgruntled Frank.

Phil dropped to the floor again and flashed the electric light below.

"Seems bent," he answered, "but I guess she'll work if we ever get a chance to use it."

"Well, don't get sore," was Frank's answer. "We learn by experience. I'll land in the softest wheat or cornfield that happens to be below. But we won't try it till the lightning flashes again."

For some moments after the car had again been headed northeast and quartered on the gale once more, the boys waited anxiously for a new flash. When it came they were well beyond the trees. Frank put the car toward the widening fields beneath and Phil lay with open eyes, apprehensive of the dreaded fence, trees or buildings.

"Now--!" yelled Phil excitedly, as the vague surface of a green wheatfield caught his eye and he saw that they were clear of fences and other obstructions. "Put her down."

Frank's work was guided by chance and Phil's stream of instructions. The tremor and whirr behind the boys had been stopped and at last, with a plunge as of a body being dropped into a bed of mortar, the car came to a jarring stop. The operator dropped his wheel, his face wet with perspiration and his hands trembling. Phil sprang from the floor, his hair water-soaked, but his electric flash light aglow.

"Well," he began with a half laugh, "here we are. Where? I give it up."

"Safe in a muddy wheatfield," answered Frank. "But," he went on, "what's the odds? It's rainin' cats and dogs; but the car seems all right."

"Almost afloat," commented Phil, "and we couldn't get out of this mud to-night if we tried."

"Therefore," added his companion, regaining his composure and good nature, "we'll make the best of it. There's no risk of an accident now and we're as dry as toast. It's half past eight," he went on looking at his watch, "and as we can't leave her here alone, let's make a night of it."

"Talk about rain on the attic roof, and a dry bed beneath," added Phil, who had also regained his spirits, "I don't believe it's any better than bunkin' in the closed car of an airship."

"Particularly when it's anchored safe and tight in a wheatfield," suggested Frank, laughing.

Fifteen minutes later the two tired but happy boys, despite the still heavily falling rain, were fast asleep on the hard floor of the strange, glass enclosed car.

A NEWSPAPER SENSATION

"It's goin' to rain," Phil had predicted that afternoon. "Hadn't we better wait? It's bound to rain after such a muggy day."

"Well," conceded Frank, "we've figured out that rain can't hurt us. The plane is waterproof and curved so that it can't hold water. We've put holes in the flat planes on the rear. Water can't collect there. And, as far as personal comfort is concerned, our glass covered car ought to give us plenty of that."

"All right," answered Phil laughing, "but if we do go up I'll bet we don't get back home to-night."

How his prediction was fulfilled has just been seen.

The boys met at their a?rodrome, erected in a corner of a lumberyard owned by Frank's father, soon after seven o'clock in the evening. Not until nearly eight o'clock was it wholly dark; then the sky grew suddenly black. Phil was still somewhat skeptical but neither had ever stopped when the other led the way and, a few minutes before eight o'clock, the monoplane shot out of the shed and was instantly out of sight--had there been spectators.

The yard watchman, Old Dick, fast friend and open admirer of the two boys, stood shaking his head and lantern for some minutes. Finally, when the rain began to fall and the wind broke into a half gale, he hastened to his shanty 'phone and called up Mr. Graham.

"Misther Graham," reported Dick, "thim byes is off ag'in in that flyin' machane." Evidently there was some excited comment or question at the other end of the 'phone. "Yis," Dick continued, "they'll be not over five minutes gone, but 'tis rainin' somethin' fierce an' I'm seem' nather hide nor hair o' thim since."

When they came about, carelessly neglecting to note their precise compass bearings, they were in a position to make a rapid glide. This for a few moments they did, reaching a speed of sixty-two miles an hour for a short time. Then they discovered that they were not sure of their course.

"The trouble was," explained Phil later to his mother, "that you can't tell anything about your real movements in an airship when you are flying in a heavy wind and have no landmarks. You've got to remember that you don't feel the wind at all--except that caused by your own flight. In a heavy wind, you move with it; the airship vessel is buried in the fluid of the wind, and moves with it, just as a submarine in a deep river wouldn't feel the current. It would be a part of it."

"I'd think you'd tack just like you do in a sailboat," suggested his mother.

"That's what every one seems to think," Phil explained, "but you can't. You are carried away just as rapidly as if you were directly in the teeth of the wind. The best way is to head right up in the wind. If your engine is stronger than the wind, you'll advance; if it isn't, you'll go back."

"I hope this cures you of your venturesome ideas," commented his mother earnestly.

"Not at all," answered her son. "It gives us just the experience we need. We were over the trees when Frank tried to tack. He drifted back more than he moved sideways. But we know now."

This conversation occurred the next day. That evening, Mrs. Ewing did not become alarmed until a late hour. Then, in her concern over Phil's failure to return home, she telephoned to the Graham home. Mrs. Graham could only tell her what Old Dick had reported; that Mr. Graham had gone to the a?rodrome and failed to get any information; that her husband had hastened back and telegraphed to the authorities of several towns on the probable course of the boys and was now, with two friends, scouring the country roads to the south.

"Now," he said with assumed confidence to his wife, "we'll soon have 'em back. It's daylight and they will soon reach some town and a 'phone. I'll get the automobile out and be ready to go for them."

Mr. Graham had just left the house on his way to the garage when his wife called him excitedly.

"They're at Osceola--they've been asleep in that thing all night," she screamed, bursting into tears; "but they're all right."

"Is he on the 'phone?" called back her husband in a peculiar tone.

"No," she answered, "they're coming in on the electric car."

"There's no car till six o'clock," exclaimed Mr. Graham. "Osceola is only twelve miles out. I'll have 'em here in an hour," and in a few minutes his big roadster was humming south toward Osceola.

Under a two-column head the disappearance of the boys was narrated in detail. The failure to hear from them; the violence of the wind and rain, and the conceded risk of all a?roplane flights, were all used as justification that the boys were undoubtedly dead.

"The Graham-Ewing monoplane adds to the efficiency of previously built machines by development in accordance with the changeable factors in the 'law of the a?roplane.' These are the speed and the angle of incidence to the line of flight.

"In this machine the plane is mounted so that it may be moved to any angle, adapting itself to speed and lifting at will, and offering opportunity for use as a steady device. It avoids longitudinal oscillation by means of a large nonlifting tail surface, and the front of the fuselage is enclosed with glass to protect the aviator.

"When starting, a large angle of incidence is essential to get more lift and rise. Then, one wants a small angle to fly fast enough to dodge through the air eddies. With the Graham-Ewing monoplane this can be done. If the machine tips, the main planes can be tilted to correct the trouble. They also can be used as a brake.

"Putting the center of gravity below the center of lift has always caused trouble in this manner: If a puff of wind hits the craft head-on the wings were retarded, while the small weight below was not, and its momentum carried the machine ahead, making the rear end of the plane whip down. This has been corrected by putting on a long tail with large tail-surfaces which check this movement. It adds to buoyancy, since the unmovable tail causes wind puffs to raise the whole machine in the air. The low center of gravity, at the same time, helps keep the machine level from side to side.

"Here is a description in figures of the airship:

"Breadth of wing, 39 feet; length over-all, 44 feet; chord of wings, 8 feet; center of gravity, 7 feet below the center of pressure; wings mounted on framework above front end of fuselage, which is enclosed in glass and aluminum; enclosed car has room for pilot, passenger and motor; two 8 1/2 foot propellers driven from gearing at 800 revolutions per minute; nonlifting tail surface of 50 square feet, in addition to a plane lifting surface of 546 square feet; rudder, 25 square feet; the car is 4 feet high, 30 inches wide and 14 feet long; beneath it an aluminum boatshaped body is arranged to enable the operator to alight in the water; two wheels in front and one in the rear form the running gear."

Of the two boys, Frank was the son of J. R. Graham, a wealthy furniture manufacturer. Phil Ewing, a few months older than Frank, was employed in Mr. Graham's factory. Frank, always a great reader, was of a romantic turn. He had a love of adventure which ran to distant lands, hunting and wild animals. This he had from books, the stories of Du Chaillu, Stanley, Selous and other great hunters. His actual experience extended little beyond books and he owned neither rod nor gun.

Phil was just the opposite. He was a fly fisherman, had shot his deer in the northern Michigan woods, was familiar with camp life and was a young naturalist. He owned his own gun, had made his own split bamboo rod, could tie a trout fly and, with a talent for drawing and coloring, could skin and mount birds and animals.

In the factory, Phil assisted in the machine carving department. His familiarity with tools made him the chief worker on the airships, but it was Frank's digging into aviation history that produced many of the advanced ideas of the monoplane.

The first rays of the sun pouring through the glass of their cabin roused the boys to early activity. Apparently the monoplane was uninjured, but its big pneumatic landing wheels were deep in the mud of the field and the nearest house was a quarter of a mile away.

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