HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE

THE WAVES WERE INCREASING—THE YACHT COULD NOT LAST MUCH LONGER

Page [51]

HIKE AND THE
AEROPLANE
BY
TOM GRAHAM
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN TWO COLORS BY
ARTHUR HUTCHINS

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1912, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian

August, 1912

TO
EDWIN AND ISABEL LEWIS,
THE AUTHOR’S OLDEST FRIENDS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE

HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE

CHAPTER I
A RESCUE IN CANYON DIABLO

Two boys were riding on horseback along a little trail that overhung Canyon Diablo. They were exploring the lonely country miles below Monterey, on the California coast. Above them rose the mountains; a thousand feet below them was the Diablo River. The boys were dressed in khaki, with puttees, and with broad-brimmed felt hats that looked as though they had slept in them and used them for dippers and footballs.

The strong United States cavalry horses which they rode seemed to be ready for anything, and the boys themselves did not act as though they were much afraid of a drop from this narrow shelf of rock.

Hike Griffin, who rode ahead, was a boy of sixteen, with straight shoulders that were going to become very broad. He had a shock of the blackest hair that ever grew, and quiet, gray eyes that never seemed to worry. His mouth was strong, yet with little laughter-wrinkles at the side, as though he saw life as an interesting joke.

He rode so easily that he almost slouched in his saddle, like a cowpuncher. But when the horse reared at a rabbit that started up from the chaparral, he straightened up like a cavalry officer leading a squadron on parade, and coaxed her into behaving, laughing at her and patting her neck.

That was just the way Hike Griffin had handled the Freshman football team at Santa Benicia Military Academy, all the fall before. “Hike” wasn’t his only name. His father, Major James Griffin, of the army Signal Corps, had named him Gerald. Hike had feared that the fellows at Santa Benicia would call him “Geerawld.”

They started to, but when he took his hazing like a man, and captured the hearts of all his classmates, he was christened “Jerry.” Then he became right half and captain of the Freshman football team. With a splendid sixty-yard run or “hike” as westerners call it, he made the touch-down which won the Freshmen’s great annual game with San Dinero Prep.

While he was dashing down the field with the ball under his arm, the Santa Benicia rooters went mad, yelling “Hike, Jerry, hike! Griffin, hike, hike!” After that, he was known as “Hike.” The same meaning, said Poodle Darby, “to go with speed, like a whale-fish!”

In the spring, he had done some more hiking, when he won the half-mile and cross-country races, running along easily, as though he were a little chilly, and wanted to get warm. There was no more danger that he would be insulted by “Geerawld.”

So he was quite happy when he went home to the Monterey Presidio for summer vacation, and took with him his classmate and roommate, Torrington Darby.

You must not think that Torrington Darby was called that! You would have known he couldn’t have been, if you had seen him—round, sleek as a dove, always grinning all over his happy face, and usually drawling songs he made up himself; very lazy and very cheerful. Just the same he always got his lessons. In fact, he was much quicker at the books than was Hike.

He made life so interesting to all his friends that they decided he must have a better handle than “Torrington.” So they sat upon him, one evening; one on his face and another on his chest, while a third tied up his legs. This was so that he could not interfere with their important decision. Darby looked very patient and folded his hands and whined like a small dog, after kicking Left Eared Dongan vigorously; so they named him “Poodle,” and made him beg for small sticks, out in the Yard.

It was Poodle Darby who was riding behind Hike Griffin, along the canyon trail, making the day hideous by singing that good California chant, “Hallelujah, I’m a bum.”

They had been out on the trip for four days, and the excellent Poodle had sung that thing ninety thousand, seven hundred and steen times, Hike figured.

“Come on, Poodle; we’ll have to hustle if we’re going to reach the top of the trail for camp to-night,” Hike shouted.

“Oh, why don’t you work, as other men do—

All right then, hike, Hike, and I’ll fol-lol-low you!”

So Poodle carelessly bawled back, and ground his heel into the side of his horse, kicking it into a canter.

The horse started. A rock slipped on the hillside above and rattled down, striking her flank. She flung up her head. Poodle vainly pulled on the rein, as she pranced skittishly.

Her back feet slipped. Over the side of the trail she slid. She pawed furiously with her front hoofs, but could not get hold of the slippery rock. She was surely sinking—close to the drop of a thousand feet.

For a moment her rear hoofs stuck, safe, on a tiny ledge.

Poodle cried “Hike!” once. Then he was silent, trying to keep from thinking of the awful drop below him.

Hike looked around. He did not make a sound. He spurred his horse, reached a broader spot in the trail, turned, and came loping back.

Quietly he said to Poodle, “Jump.”

“Can’t—make her lose footing,” stammered Poodle.

Hike dropped from his horse and ventured down the side of the cliff. His calmness gave courage to the trembling Poodle. He held out his hand and commanded, “Put foot on that. Jump.”

Poodle obeyed. Hike clutched an old mesquite root with his left hand, to hold himself in place, and almost threw Poodle up to safety. The horse was not dislodged from the position to which she desperately clung.

Taking her bridle, Hike coaxed. She shivered, but would not move. As quietly as though he were petting her in the stable, Hike rubbed her nose and urged her. Still she would not move.

“Got to hoist her up.” Hike bit off his words as though he were running a team-play. “Here, Pood’, fasten bridle to my saddle-horn. Hustle. I’ll make my horse drag her up. Say, if both horses get pulled off trail, I’ll jump. Try catch me.”

“Oh, don’t try it!” Poodle’s round face was very serious.

“Fasten that BRIDLE, I said!” ordered Hike. His voice sounded like his father’s, on the parade ground.

Poodle jumped to obey. Hike got on his own mount, still soothing the horse that was in danger. Resolutely turning his back, Hike touched the rowel to his nag.

With the bridle tugging sharply at her, Poodle’s horse started, scrambled frantically at the edge of the cliff, climbed, wavered, then bolted up, with heaving back, safe on the trail.

Poodle sat down, looking very pale, now that the danger was over. He grinned at Hike, who had dismounted and was patting the shivering, excited horses. It was a very sick young grin, but Poodle worked over it for a while, and it got much better. He drawled:

“Say, Hike, that was fine scenery from that ledge.”

“Um,” said Hike, after thinking it over.

“You’re dead right,” agreed Poodle. “That’s what I was thinking. Don’t look so blooming serious about it, though.”

“Well, you’d look serious if you had to spend all your time when you weren’t sleeping rescuing Poodles from death,” remarked Hike.

“I do!” stated Poodle. “Say, I thought I was going to be an aeroplane there, for a second. No, I thought my horse was goin’ to be! But gee! I was wondering how I could deflect her front—”

“Nice word, deflect.”

“—control when we struck the canyon down there.... Maybe the joke’d have been kinda flat, like me, if it hadn’t been for you, Hike. Much obliged for rescuing me. I oughtn’t to get killed to-day, ’cause I promised to write Mother about the scenery down the coast.”

“So thoughtful of you,” said Hike. “You’re a good young un, Pood’. I got twice as scared as you.”

“Sure. That was why my teeth was chattering so. I was so scared you’d get scareder. Le’s hike.”

“Right,” remarked Hike, and they mounted and rode on. They were pretty quiet for a mile, and there were no races. At the end of it, Poodle called:

“Hike.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Say—I was awful scared.”

“So was I,” Hike grinned back, and they both laughed.

Before dusk, they reached the peak at the head of the canyon, and looked down on the other side of the San Francisquito range of mountains. A hundred little valleys stretched in all directions. There were no signs of human life. Many of these valleys had never been visited by any white man except some wandering prospector looking for gold mines. One of the ravines led to a valley at least a mile wide, flat and grassy, with a comfortable brook flowing through it.

“Gee, that’s a great country down there,” observed Poodle. “We’ll explore it. Jiminy, this is great—feels like we were the first white men in America.” Tethering his horse, he stood on the edge of an arroyo leading down from the peak.

“What d’you say to the first white men getting some wood before it’s too dark?” murmured Hike, rooting out a big log.

“If you weren’t a nice young man, I’d think that was a hint,” retorted Poodle, quite cheerfully. “If I catch the idee, you b’lieve we might use a little fire-wood.”

“No, that ain’t it at all. I just thought we might need some toothpicks after dinner. ’Course we’ll do the cooking in some moonlight,” explained Hike. “Nice hot moonlight.”

“Well, now, I’d almost suppose you were gettin’ sarcastic,” said Poodle, “but ’course if you don’t want me to help you ketchum heap plenty wood, why, I’ll have a small game of mumble-te-peg.” He opened his knife, but, as he started his game, one Hike, a person of much muscle, picked him up, carried him over to the remains of a dead fir tree, and murmured, “Want to get dropped down the arroyo?”

“A hint’s always enough for little Poodle,” declared that cheerful gentleman, and got busy with twigs and branches.

When dusk came, they were frying bacon stuck on sharpened twigs, and singing “Hallelujah, I’m a bum.” Coffee was singing with them, in the pot among the coals. Poodle stated that he could eat a whole grocery store, including the scales, wrapping paper, and cashier. (He didn’t have the chance to prove whether he could or not, however, for even so husky a boy as Hike doesn’t usually carry a whole grocery store at the cantle of his saddle when he goes on a riding trip.)

With the bacon and flapjacks and syrup and coffee inside them, the two boys lay with their feet to the fire. They had forgotten the strain of the rescue on the cliff-side. They were just sinking off into sleep, looking so comfortably and dreamily at the cheerful fire, when Poodle started up, awakened by the sound of a coyote’s howl nearby.

“Say, I thought I heard something besides a coyote,” he said. “Sounded like hammering—and there ain’t a human within twenty miles of us. Even if there was a smuggler on the coast, he’d be five miles away.”

“Yes,” replied Hike, very quietly, “I’ve been listening to it for five minutes. It is a man hammering—on iron—and there can’t be anybody down in those valleys—and there is!... Well, we’ll find out in the morning. Some mystery, some mys—some—” Hike was asleep.

“Should say there was a mystery,” grunted Poodle, sticking just the tip of his button of a nose from the top of his blanket. “Think you might get a little bit scared, anyway. You oughta be. It’s a mys— It sure is— I dunno—”

Alas, we can never know what Poodle didn’t know, for by this time the only thing awake around that camp on the peak was a lone coyote, who came over and reflectively ate the top of one of Poodle’s shoes. And still the mysterious hammering kept up, down in the wilderness of valleys.

CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMERING

“Don’t stop and make too many poems about the valleys, Poodle,” commanded Hike Griffin, after breakfast.

“Star of the gridiron, I ain’t making po’ms. I’m beating the job and getting in a loaf on you,” Poodle Darby assured him, as, with chin in hand, he looked across the wonderful green hills stretched far below the peak where they had camped all night. “Say, I’ve been listening for that duffer that was pounding iron so late, and I thought I heard him, over there to the sou’-sou’-east.”

“You’ve got a great little ole brain, Pood’. You hit it right. Us for the mystery of the hammering. Probably a stray bunch of cattlemen, riding the ranges. Probably shoeing their horses. Peaceful as pie.”

“Yuh,” grinned Poodle. “Think it’s counterfeiters?”

“Yes. ’S matter of fact, I do.” Hike was very quiet about it, but Poodle looked up admiringly. The young captain of the Freshman football team acted as though he meant very busy business.

Leaving their horses tethered, and their food cached, except for a little bacon, tea, and rice, they scrambled down an arroyo, crawled down a rock-face, with fingers and toes clinging to ledges, and reached a long slope covered with thick chaparral, through which Hike forced a way, with Poodle cheerfully trotting after him. They reached the beginning of the mile-broad valley which they had noticed the night before. A small hill separated it from them. As they started to mount this hill, on the other side of it sounded a clatter and banging, as though a giant blacksmith shop were in operation.

“Hssshhhh!” came from Hike, as Poodle started to exclaim. Up the hill swung Hike, his shoulders low, making himself as small as he could, but with his long slender legs going like propeller-blades on a motor boat. At the top Hike crouched down; then held up his hands and said—still peering across the crest—“Well, I’ll be everlastingly hornswoggled.”

Poodle always had to talk about something. Though he was wild with desire to see what there was on the other side, he stopped, shook his chubby forefinger at Hike, and said in the tones of the headmaster at Santa Benicia Academy, “Griffin, this is shocking. What words! What wick-ed, lit-tle wor-dies!”

“Choke yourself to death and come here,” retorted Hike, and Poodle crawled up beside him. He saw, in a grassy hollow opening on the broad valley, a long, high, wide shed, like a cow stable ten times enlarged. Beside it was a forge with a pile of metal—pistons and bolts and motor-wheels; and spread out on the grass was something like a big box-kite slightly twisted. Not a person was in sight.

“Well, I’ll be completely swigbottled!” stated Poodle. “Say, Hike, what is it all? D’you know?”

“Torringtum, this is very sad. Such wick-ed words from the mouth of—”

“Oh, shut up. What is it? I’ll foam at the mouth in about—”

“It’s an aerodrome, I’d say—shed for an aeroplane. Too small for a dirigible balloon. And that box-kite thing there by the forge looks to me like part of some daffy sort of a plane. Poodski, I reckon we’ve run into some crazy aviator’s shop.... Counterfeiter nothin’!”

“Well, if that gent thinks that thing is an aeroplane wing, he’s counterfeiting aeroplanes, anyway,” complained Poodle. “I never saw such a ridiculousness.”

“Come on,” said Hike—a remark which he made very often, or so said Poodle, who now complained, “Every time I get settled down and comfy, looking at nice valleys, or an asylum for nutty aviators, you go and drag me away. Well, lead on, gallant captain.”

As they descended the slope, out of the shed, keeping his back toward them, came the strangest man they had ever seen. He was dressed in one single garment of white—“a night-shirt that’s crazy as he is,” sniffed Poodle—with leather sandals on his feet, and with his wild, black hair falling to his shoulders. As he turned, they both cried out with wonder. The man’s black beard reached his chest. Even twenty feet away, they could see his eyes shining like a wild animal’s among the knotted hair that was towsled over his forehead. In his hand was a rod of metal. As he saw them he shrieked and started back, then rushed at them, waving the iron rod, and shouting “Go away! For your lives. G’ ’way!”

He came up to them, stopped, and bellowed, “You boys get out of this or I’ll kill you. I’ll give you till I get my rifle, and if you ain’t gone then— I’ll brain you—I’ll kill you—”

He came nearer, still waving the iron rod. There was quick team-play. Hike and Poodle picked up sticks, without a word. They separated and came at the man from opposite sides. He stopped. He dropped the iron rod. He ran his fingers through his beard and shouted, “What do you want? Whom are you spying for?”

“No one,” explained Hike. “We’ve just been on a riding trip—down the coast from Monterey. Rode up Canyon Diablo, and came down this side of the Big Peak. Didn’t know there was anybody here. I’m awf’ly interested in aeroplanes, though. You see, my father—Major Griffin—I’m Jerry Griffin, this is Torry Darby—he’s in command of the Signal Corps at Monterey Presidio. Honest, I don’t want to butt in, but that funny box-kite thing there made me awf’ly interested. If we’re intruding, we’ll beat it, but I’d like to learn something about that thing.... You see I’ve been reading a bunch about aeroplanes, and Lieutenant Adeler—Jack Adeler, you know, invented the Adeler hydroaeroplane, the one that beat the record rising from the water—well, he’s at Monterey, and he’s showed me a lot about aeroplanes....”

The man said nothing. He had seated himself upon a rock, twisting away at his long beard, looking as though he were in despair. Poodle and Hike stared at each other. Knowing nothing whatever about aeroplanes, Poodle could only remark, “Jiminy, never would expect to find a flyin’ machine shed back in the hills, would you? Hope we ain’t butting in. We’ll keep our mouths shut. I guess we’re both gentlemen—or gentlekids, anyway!”

“Yes,” continued Hike, while the man still kept silent, seeming not to hear. “I’m really sorry we found your place, if you feel—”

The man suddenly broke in, “Yes, that’s the way it goes—Signal Corps and government money, and hydroaeroplane, and here I am, with the greatest aeroplane in the world, and hardly a cent left to finish it. If I had the army behind me— Once I thought I would—I’d finish my machine—go flying across the hills—make the government back me.”

“I’d be glad to introduce you to my father and Lieutenant Adeler—and, and Captain Welch, though you won’t—he isn’t so nice, quite—if you’d come up to the Monterey Presidio, some time,” stammered Hike, feeling very shy before this man, who looked as though he had lost his last friend. “I’m sure they’d be glad to help you.”

The man threw back his head, shook his fist at the sky (“which didn’t seem to mind being shook at,” Poodle noticed), and roared: “I’m sure they wouldn’t. Pigs—scoundrels—thieves—impostors—all of them. If they aren’t in a conspiracy against me, it’s because I’ve kept ’em from knowing anything about me.”

Hike’s eyebrows lifted. Poodle was thinking that he had looked just that way when the captain of the San Dinero Freshman team had made fun of Santa Benicia, before the game.

“Sir,” said Hike, “you are speaking of my father and my friends. They are gentlemen, and they love the army. The army needs good aeroplanes. If yours is good, they would even forgive your talking the way you have!”

The man glared and shook his beard. Then he saw Poodle’s happy face, with a smile hiding in his eyes. Suddenly the man laughed:

“You’re both of you amusing little cusses, and hanged if I don’t believe you’re right. I apologize. I’ve been living here alone—not seeing anybody except a Portygee ranchero, that brings me my grub and tools and aeronautical journals. I guess I’ve kind of lost my party manners. Young sir, I apologize. I’ll be glad to come up to Monterey and meet the officers—and I’ll be glad to show you my machine. Fact is, if somebody with money doesn’t back me, I can’t go on. I’m broke. But I have it done now—the aeroplane itself is all done. I’ve even flown it a little. But all I’ve got for engine is an old 1909 fifty horse-power Gnome, and I need two hundred and fifty horse-power.”

“Two hundred and fifty!” shrieked Hike. “Why, nobody uses over seventy or so. They tried a hundred and fifty in the French army contest, but it was too much.”

“The French didn’t have my aeroplane. It’s the first really practical tetrahedral that—”

“Ouch!” cried Poodle, as the hard word hit his ears.

“Tet-ra-hé-dral—it’s made up of a number of little parts that look like paper wings. Each of them is made up of two triangles, the bottoms together. Like this.”

With an old nail, he scratched on a rock this plan of one of the tiny “wings”:

“Yump,” he went on. “I’ve finally worked out the complete tetrahedral aeroplane, following some plans of Alexander Graham Bell—the man who invented the telephone. You see, boys, with all these little planes put together, the air can get hold of lots more surface than it can on the ordinary aeroplane. It doesn’t make any difference which way the aeroplane is turned, there’s always planes for the air to get under and hold the machine. An ordinary aeroplane is like the sides of a wooden box that honey comes in, and mine is like the honey itself, with all the hundreds of little walls of wax.

“But,” he insisted, “with all these wings, the weight of the whole thing is much less than an ordinary aeroplane would have if it had as much supporting surface as my machine has.

“So the tetrahedral can carry an engine that’s enough bigger than the ordinary aeroplane to make her go much faster than the ordinary one. She could stand an engine that would send her at two hundred miles an hour, and I could guarantee your officers that she’d be able to carry enough gasoline so that she could fly across the country without even a single stop for fuel. And she could make that trip in thirty-five hours, or less—scoot right along at a hundred miles an hour—two hundred at a pinch.

“Another thing is: with all these planes, turned every which way, she’d flutter down like a butterfly, instead of falling hard, if the engine stopped on you, or anything happened to the aviator. That’s the kind of a machine I’ve got! Martin Priest is my name. I’ve been working away on aeroplanes for ten years, and now I’ve got the best in the world!”

Martin Priest was standing up, waving his arms, and yelling. Poodle whispered, “Gee, he’s sure got something, all right! Maybe fits!”

But Hike was used to seeing officer aviators grow enthusiastic, and he replied, “Bite yourself dead” to Poodle, before he answered the other, “That sounds great, Mr. Priest. I’d like awfully to see your machine.”

Martin Priest led the way to the door of the aerodrome. Inside was a structure like a huge blunt wedge, made up of hundreds of the small wings. It was like a crowd of white butterflies, or the swarming of big white bees.

While the boys stood gaping at this strange cluster, and the rudder and elevating planes, Martin Priest ramped up and down, explaining, throwing about long words that made Poodle jump. They didn’t get much out of the explanation, but at the end of it Hike turned to Priest and said:

“I’m not as old as Methusaleh, and I guess there’s still at least a couple of things about aviating that I haven’t learned, but I can see that this machine would be mighty safe, and I should think it could carry all sorts of a load. Well, I’ll just grab the United States Army—or Lieutenant Adeler, anyway, and make him help you. I’ll put the Army behind you!”

Martin Priest laughed. “That’s a pretty large order for an old man like you, isn’t it?” he asked Hike.

“Uh huh,” calmly remarked that worthy. “But I’m goin’ to do it. We’ll be back here—couple of days—with Lieutenant Adeler.... Come on, you young Poodle.”

“Uh huh,” said Poodle. “Sure, I’ll come.... But I was so comfortable sitting here on this box!” Groaning, he bestirred his round cheerful self to follow Hike’s easy lope up the hill, toward their camp.

CHAPTER III
LIEUTENANT ADELER AND WIBBELTY-WOBBELTY

Major James Griffin, commander of the Army Signal Corps at the Monterey Presidio, did not know that the two boys who came riding up to the door of his office were bearing a great message. He didn’t even know that the taller was the great Hike Griffin. He believed him to be merely Jerry Griffin, Son. Why, sometimes he even thought of him as Gerald Griffin! And, to him, Poodle was only “the son of my old friend Tom Darby.” So he was not much impressed when the boys came scurrying in; excited, though they were tired and what Poodle called “feak and weeble around the knees,” from their hard fast ride back up the coast.

“Well, boys,” smiled the tall, slender, gentle Major, “did you have a good ride?”

Hike explained that they’d had a good ride, a very good ride. That they hadn’t minded sleeping under single blankets, after all. And that they had found the greatest aeroplane in the world.

The Major listened smilingly to their description of Martin Priest and his tet-ra-hé-dral (Hike stumbled over the word, and had to take it in sections, as though it were a circus train!) “Well, well, strange,” said the Major. “I’ll see you at dinner, boys. Better run along now, and get a hot tub.”

He turned back to the pile of papers on his desk. Poodle, by raising his eyebrows, asked silently of Hike, “What shall we do?” Just as silently, Hike replied, “Nothing!” by wriggling his shoulders.

They left the office, got that hot bath, and went to find Captain Willoughby Welch. Though they did not like the Captain, he was next in rank to the Major.

Poodle had nicknamed him “Wibbelty-Wobbelty.” Other people called him “that mean officer.” Captain Welch was a man who always seemed to be sneering—and usually was. No one liked him, yet his manners were beautiful, and his reputation as a Signal Corps expert so great, that Hike couldn’t help looking up to him and admiring him at times—though he never thought, for one single minute, of loving him, as he did splendid Lieutenant Jack Adeler. Captain Welch had been a teacher of physics, of electricity and light and heat, at West Point. When men began trying out aviation, he made so many wonderful flights, and clever inventions—such as a means of fastening bracing cords to the struts or props of planes—that he became famous. He first went over to France, and got one of the first aero pilot’s licenses in the world.

The War Department had detailed him to look into the whole matter of the different sorts of aeroplanes, for a report to a “Board of Aviation,” which was to meet in Washington, late in August of that summer, with Brigadier General Thorne of the Signal Corps at the head of it. This board was to recommend what they considered the best aeroplane—and Congress was going to spend nearly a million dollars in buying aeroplanes of that sort. Their recommendation would probably be largely founded on what Captain Welch reported. So Hike was anxious to have the Captain look very carefully into the matter of poor Martin Priest’s aeroplane. But he felt very doubtful. For Captain Welch had already announced that he would report favorably on the Jolls aeroplane.

Hike didn’t like Mr. P. J. Jolls, the owner of the Jolls aeroplane and friend to Captain Welch. Mr. P. J. Jolls was a plump person, with rolls of fat at the back of his neck, which stuck out over his collar like layers of sausage. He had a loud voice and, as Poodle said, “was allus a-actin’ like he thought he owned the universe and was comin’ ’round to collect rent from you for bein’ on his old earth!” Mr. P. J. Jolls had never been up in an aeroplane, and he had never invented one single bolt or wire. But he was very clever at money-making. After collecting several millions by selling patent medicines, shaving-soap, and fake mine-stock, he had cornered the aeroplane-market. Nearly every model of American monoplane or biplane, with all patents, was now owned by him. He had hired inventors to combine the best things about all the different sorts of machines in one Jolls monoplane and one Jolls biplane.

Captain Welch had announced that the Jolls machines were the best in the world. Lieutenant Adeler declared that there were better ones—that Jolls was an old fake—and Hike loved him for saying so. But Welch said that for his part he was sure Mr. P. J. Jolls would be recognized by Congress as the greatest aviator in the world. He seemed to think that Mr. Jolls was also one of the most lovable men in the world; and to be glad that Mr. Jolls was going to get Congress’s good round million dollars.

He even had Mr. Jolls as a guest at the Monterey Presidio, and took him to the Officers’ Club. All the other officers found that they had important engagements away from the club, when they heard Mr. Jolls’ loud thick voice. Even Major Griffin, the most polite of all men, disappeared.

While he was at the Presidio, Mr. P. J. Jolls had once patted Poodle Darby on the head, and called him a “fine boy.” Ten minutes later, Hike Griffin found Poodle washing the head that had just been thus patted, with strong yellow soap, meanwhile seriously singing to himself:

“I hope a sea of soap suds rolls

Above the grave of P. J. Jolls.

He patted me upon the head,

And oh! the orful thing he said;

He’ll soon, I hope, be nice—and—dead!”

Hike had then sat on his legs, like a Turk, and raising his long arms declared, “Poodski, never before did I know that you are the greatest poet in the world, but now I see that you are.”

When Hike and Poodle found Captain Willoughby-Wibbelty Welch, lover of the aeroplanes of P. J. Jolls, the good Captain was smoking a long thin cigar, sitting in a Chinese wicker chair on the porch of his quarters. He smiled that silky, sneaky, snakey, sneery smile of his (at least, that’s what Poodle said his smile was, afterwards), and called out as they came up the walk, “Ah! Home again, boys?”

“No,” whispered Poodle to Hike. “We’re still at the South Pole fishing for bread-fruit-fish with a crow bar. Foolish question eleventy thousand and one.”

“Well, how did the gallant heroes find the long trek?” smiled Captain Welch.

“Great,” Hike gravely said. “Captain, way down the coast—in a canyon, where he wouldn’t be disturbed at his experiments—there’s an aviator chap with a—uh—a tet-ra-hé-dral aeroplane that’s the fastest machine in the world, and that’d carry the most weight. He hasn’t got the engine to fly her right, but I wish I could get you to come down and talk it over with him. I’d like to bet you’d find it was just the machine the War Department is looking for, for the army aeroplane.”

“What makes you think it’s the fastest machine in the world?” Captain Welch was still smiling, but he looked more patronizing than ever.

“Why, he explained it to me, Captain. And I saw it. And it strikes me as so awf’ly reasonable. I’m sure it’s worth some looking into, anyway.” Hike felt fussed. His argument did not sound convincing.

“Why, my boy, there isn’t a crank aviator on earth that won’t tell you the fool machine he’s made out of barrel hoops and cheese cloth would fly if he only had the engine. He knows it will, and won’t you please let him have the money and you’ll get seventy per cent. He’s always sure it would pay you to look into it. Why, my boy, one of the principal tasks of the Signal Corps is keeping cranks with wonderful inventions away. They’d use up all your time, if you’d let them. You just take my advice and don’t listen to them.”

The Captain stood up, yawned like a nice tabby cat, smoothed his neat little mustache, smiled, and started to go into the house.

“O Captain,” called Hike, “won’t you come down—fine ride—and just take a look at the—”

“Couldn’t. Really. Haven’t time. Must finish up my report for the Board of Aviation,” the Captain said, very sweetly, but as though he considered the business finished.

“Wibbelty!” whispered Poodle.

“Wobbelty!” whispered Hike.

Their last chance was in Lieutenant Jack Adeler, the youngest officer in the Signal Corps at Monterey.

Jack Adeler was the son of a quiet old gentleman who had left him five hundred thousand dollars, a ranch in Mexico, and the kindliest disposition that a man ever had. He had graduated from Yale, then entered the army, and was devoting a great deal of his own private fortune to aviation. He had never made such showy flights as had Captain Welch, and he never advertised his knowledge of aviation as did the Captain, but Hike had the feeling that he really knew about ten times as much about it. He was solidly built and quick and quiet, and he liked to have Hike and Poodle with him, and never was tired of answering their questions.

When they found him—playing golf on the Post links—he listened to their tale of Martin Priest and the tetrahedral. He said that he too was a little afraid that Priest was a crank; but he promised to ride down the coast with the boys and look over the machine.

They started the next day.

When they reached the secret valley beyond Canyon Diablo, the crank aviator was sitting on a soap-box, waiting for them. He had cut his hair, in a rough way, and had changed his crazy-looking white gown for overalls, a blue flannel shirt, and a greasy sweater-jacket. Poodle’s opinion was that he had changed himself from a crazy prophet into a tramp, a hobo mechanic; but both Hike and Lieutenant Adeler said that he looked like an Edison, with his broad forehead, slender hands, and bright eyes.

“Well, I wish I could find out all them things, like you high-brows,” sighed Poodle. “I admit that I’m a mutt. I ain’t even sure but what I’m a wutt. So I hope you’ll let me go to sleep on that nice soft grass, and not yell ‘Come on’ too quick.”

Martin Priest seemed to have waked up. He spoke quickly and hopefully—just as Hike did when he was interested. He showed them the machine, and told them of the small flights he had taken with his broken-down engine.

He explained a hundred devices. For instance, there was the speed changing gear. His aeroplane was the only one that ran on several speeds, like an automobile, so that the aviator could fly at different rates without having to cut down the feed of the engine with the hand-throttle, every second. But there was a hand-throttle, too. Then, there were double control wires, running from the levers to the rudder and the elevating planes, so that, if one wire broke (a thing that has caused many an aviator’s death) another would take its place.

For starting the machine from the seat—without having to have some one whirl the propeller till the engine was going—there was an electrical motor, which was a sort of boy of all work. For, when it was through its work as a motor, it became a dynamo, and filled up storage-batteries which worked the big electrical search-light, for use when the machine was flying at night. It also ran a tiny electric stove, placed at the side of the freight-platform, and warmed electric heating-pads placed on the aviator’s seat to keep him warm.

But most important of all was that this machine really had what aviators call “automatic stability”—that is, the power to right itself, and not go tumbling down, when it was tipped up by bad winds, such as a “retarded following breeze.” Most aeroplanes have little planes called “ailerons,” which swing up and help to balance the aeroplane when it tips. They are worked by the aviator, and if anything happens to him, or to them, very quick trouble follows. But with the tetrahedral’s many little planes, facing every way, the machine caught the air and righted itself no matter which way it leaned.

To all of this, Lieutenant Adeler listened without saying much. Even Poodle listened with interest, though he did keep repeating that “horrid long name,” over and over—tet-ra-hé-dral, tet-ra-hé-dral—as though he couldn’t get to like it very much!

The lieutenant poked about in the aerodrome, took off his cap and stuck his head into what Poodle called “the tetooreelederlum’s innards,” and looked over some drawings and photographs that Martin Priest had made of the tetrahedral’s flight. (He had been taking photographs even when he was hundreds of feet up in the air, by having the camera’s lens uncover automatically).

Finally, Adeler nodded a couple of times and said, “Good machine. I’m not sure but that she’d be the fastest and best in the world!”

Then Martin Priest shook hands all ’round, shouted “God bless you,” and threw himself on the ground, sobbing like a child that wants its mother.

Adeler stood quietly waiting. When Martin Priest had got control of himself, the Lieutenant said:

“Of course she’ll have to have a test. If she makes good, I’ll be glad to back you. I happen to have a good deal of money—inherited it from my father. I’ll furnish the coin and all the help I can. I’d like to have an aerodrome built for you near Monterey. And I’ll do all I can to get the government Board of Aviation—that’ll decide on what machine the Army is to buy—look over your tetrahedral. The Board meets in Washington, in August. That is, I will if she shows up well when we test her—and I think she will.”

“See here, Lieutenant,” stammered Martin Priest, “I can patch this old Gnome—she’s a good engine, all right, but she was smashed up in an accident, and I’ve just been able to tinker with her. Never had new parts for her. But we can fly as far as Monterey with her, all right. You people have three horses? Well, you, Lieutenant, and one of the boys come with me in the aeroplane—it’ll carry all three of us, and what of my stuff here I need to keep—say two thousand pounds—pretty good load, eh? especially over these hills, with all the air-flaws there are. You’ll notice there’s a regular freight platform, aft in the machine. The other boy can ride back, and there’s a young ranchero that lives across the hills that’ll be willing to go with him, riding one horse and leading the other. “When does the Army Board of Aviation meet, did you say? What? In one month? Well, I could have the tetrahedral ready to fly then, all right. But what about getting a two hundred and fifty horse-power engine?”

“There’s a man down in San Diego that tried to build a monster triplane, and he got a great big two hundred and thirty horse-power Kulnoch engine for her—you know, one of these new ones, air-cooled, with revolving cylinders, peach of an engine,” said Lieutenant Adeler. “His machine never would fly, and he wants to sell the engine. We can get that in time.”

Adeler, though he talked very quietly, had gone into the thing as though it was the one thing he counted on. Hike was so glad that he pounded Poodle on the back till that comfortable youth grappled with him mightily.

“We’ll make that test,” continued the Lieutenant. “Hike, you and Poodle draw lots to see which goes with us.... By the way, Mr. Priest, there’s just one thing we’ve got to take into account. The only proper way that we can get this machine before the Board of Aviation is to interest Captain Welch in it. He’s to report to them. He’s—uh—a little—”

“Mulish,” supplied Poodle.

“He’s a little obstinate,” the Lieutenant went on explaining. “But if the tetrahedral works out as well as I think she will, he can’t help seeing her advantages. And so he’ll have to make a favorable report to the Board.”

The boys drew lots to see which should have the flight in the tetrahedral, and which should ride horseback up to Monterey. Poodle won the aeroplane trip. He led Hike aside, and murmured, “Say, old Hike, let’s draw three times. The only fair way.”

“Don’t you want to try the tetrahedral?” asked Hike.

“’S matter of fact, I don’t,” confessed Poodle.

Hike was a good deal amazed to find Poodle apparently afraid of the trial. He was so anxious to go himself that he gladly accepted the offer to change places.

Quick at acting and good at thinking though Hike was, there were many times when he did not think so quickly as jolly Mr. Poodle. It wasn’t till long afterward that it occurred to him that Poodle had never seemed really afraid of anything; and that the chances were that he had given up the flight to please his beloved chum.

While they were talking, Lieutenant Adeler had been saying to Martin Priest, “What have you named the tetrahedral?”

“I hadn’t planned anything, yet. I suppose the general sort of aeroplane will be called the ‘Priest Model.’ I think we ought to name this particular one after young Griffin there. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d never have had even a chance at a chance.... What was that you called him—nickname—‘Hike’ was it? Why not call it ‘Hike the First’?”

“Too likely to get his name and the tetrahedral’s mixed up, I should say,” considered Lieutenant Adeler.

“Well, ‘Hustle’ is pretty much like ‘Hike.’ How about ‘Hustle the First’?”

“Fine.”

The boys were called over and informed of the tetrahedral’s name—by which they usually called her, afterwards. Hike blushed a poppy-red when he was told that the name was really in honor of him.

“Hurray for Hike’s Hustle!” shouted Poodle, and he dragged Hike and the grave Lieutenant after him in a dance about the Hustle, singing:

“Hallelujah, I’m a bum, hallelujah, bum again,

Hurray-yay-yay for old Hike’s aeroplane!”

As the three danced, Martin Priest sat down on a tool box and covered his face with his long hands.

They stopped, staring. Priest seemed to be in absolute despair. “What’s the matter, General?” shouted the irrepressible Poodle.

The inventor raised his head and looked as though he had gone blind. “I’ve—I supposed—I’ve been hoping—but I must.”

“Yes?” said Lieutenant Adeler, gently.

“I must tell you who and what I am.” The inventor was grim as an officer directing a siege. Even Poodle grew quiet. Martin Priest spoke quickly, trying to get it over:

“As far as the aeroplanes go, I’m all right—I’m square. I think I am about other things, too—now, anyway. But there was a time—”

Hike walked over, as Priest stopped, and put his arm about the inventor’s shoulder, for a second. The inventor smiled a three-cornered funny little smile, then looked grim again, and went on, swiftly:

“When I was a young chap—twenty-six—I married—I can’t tell you what I thought of my wife, but she was perfect, to me anyway. I’d graduated from Massachusetts Tech., and was with a marine engine company. I was interested in aviation, too—long before the Wrights had flown, or the Bell people, when Lilienthal was just trying his gliders. Well, this engine company was small, and I had a lot to do with the business end of it, as well as the mechanical part. My wife got mighty sick—needed a lot of things, and my salary was small. And I got in debt for a lot of aeroplane material.

“Well, I just borrowed some money from the firm’s safe—really borrowed, or that’s what I thought. I was so crazy over my wife’s sickness that I didn’t think much about it, I guess, to tell the truth.

“They found out about it, and I was arrested, and sentenced for embezzlement.... My wife died while I was in prison—back East that was.... Convict, that’s what I was. I don’t know’s you’ll want to associate—

“Well, the warden was a fine old boy. He made me head of the machine shop. I got him interested in aviation—he was a handy man with the tools himself; and we used to do a lot of work on the side—him in Christian clothes, and me in stripes.

“When I got out I’d inherited several thousand dollars from my wife’s uncle, funny old chap that had just been sitting back and watching my capers without letting me know anything about it. I wandered around the world, saw what the Wrights and Alexander Graham Bell and Curtiss were doing with aviation, and what Santos Dumont was doing in France. Saw one of J. A. D. McCurdy’s first flights. Then I came out here, and built this shack, and hoped to have a machine that I could surprise the world with, just the young ranchero helping me. But now my money’s practically all gone.

“Thought I’d better tell you just how things really stand with me.... I don’t want any false impression—”

Hike started forward and wrung Martin Priest’s hand, silently. The Lieutenant did the same. They were his friends.

As for Poodle, he did the most brilliant thing of his life—nothing at all but smile his pleasantest!

Then they began to plan the trip up to Monterey.

CHAPTER IV
THE AEROPLANE’S FIRST FLIGHT

With the patched Gnome engine, with Hike and Lieutenant Adeler and Martin Priest and nearly two thousand pounds of Priest’s baggage, the tetrahedral Hustle I stood ready to start.

There is no use denying it—Hike felt a little nervous. He had flown with the Lieutenant several times, in well-tested Jolls ’planes, but with this new machine, that looked like a castle made of playing cards by some child, he was waiting to find out whether or not he was going to be scared! He didn’t think he would be, but Poodle was grinning at him and declaring that he sure would be.

Martin Priest, the driver, snapped on the control. The tetrahedral’s engine began racing. Down the slope in front of the aerodrome she ran, bumping and hopping, then plunged out into the air, easily as a bird. Suddenly they were two hundred feet up, crossing a foothill, rising up—up—with the elevating planes sharply tilted upward. Hike yelled with joy, for never had he felt more comfortable, more like some big eagle, than then.

The earth sank below them, and left them free of it. There was none of the jar of the smaller ordinary Jolls ’planes. The tetrahedral, though it was gaining in speed, rode as smoothly and easily as a huge steamer.

They curved over the Big Peak, and a gust of wind—a real flaw—swooped up at them from the cold valley beyond. Then they struck a “hole in the air,” and the Hustle dropped two hundred feet. But she did not go down like a shot—she took the drop easily.

Again Hike shouted, and settled back in his seat, looking out to the blue sunny stretch of the Pacific Ocean, longing to soar over it in the Hustle. He laughed down at the arroyos and hills beneath them, over which they were passing so easily. They looked like small folds in a heap of green velvet.

In twenty minutes, they were in sight of Monterey. As they passed the Carmel valley, there was a crackling from the engine; it missed a stroke, and then suddenly stopped.

Hike was much interested to find that he wasn’t scared, after all. Here they were, two thousand feet up, balanced on nothing but air, with the ground very far below, and with the engine stopped.

But Martin Priest merely turned back to him, with a grin that made his prophet face look very good-natured. Then—Martin Priest took his hands entirely off the levers, stood up, and began to sing a hymn!

Gone crazy, Hike first thought—just now, when all his skill was needed, to keep them safe on the long glide to earth! Hike’s backbone seemed frozen. Then he looked at Martin Priest’s face again, and down to earth. The Hustle was sinking as easily as a feather, with a little creaking of her many planes. Only a tetrahedral could flutter down like that.

Lieutenant Adeler stood up, made ready to grapple with Martin Priest. “Let ’im alone,” shrieked Hike. “We’re going all right. Part of the test.”

“Good boy,” Martin Priest stopped singing to say. “It is. The tetrahedral can’t be wrecked.” Then he stepped back to the engine, and tried her spark.

When they had softly, easily, settled down to about a hundred feet from the earth, so that the branches of trees below seemed rushing up at them, Priest yelled to the Lieutenant, “Push that right lever forward.”

As the lever slid forward, Martin Priest started the engine. After the silence, it was deafening; like the crackling of a hundred machine-guns at once. Hike could scarcely hear himself, but he shouted again and again, while they darted up, then soared aloft to five thousand feet.

As they flew over Monterey, the people rushed from the streets and gardens up to the tops of their Spanish adobe houses. They were used to ordinary Jolls biplanes, but this great bird was different. On the fashionable drives and tennis-courts of the Del Monte hotel, rich Eastern tourists gazed up till their necks ached.

Hike yelled in Martin Priest’s ear, “Let me try her!”

“Sure,” roared back Priest, though Lieutenant Adeler, guessing what was up, shook his head. “See this lever. It raises and deflects elevating planes, for’ard there. Makes her go up and down. This one, on the left, controls her rudder—back there, like a ship’s rudder. Say, I can’t yell against this. Even fifty horse-power’s too much.”

Calmly, Priest stopped the engine. The silence sounded louder than the motor had, for a minute, and Hike yelled “Ouch!” clapping his hands to his ears.

Laughing at him, Martin Priest went on, “This bar at my feet controls the engine-feed—if you take your feet off, the feed’s shut off. There aren’t any ailerons, and there aren’t any wings to warp, for lateral stability. (Aren’t we sinking down pretty though?) Don’t need them to keep from tipping, with all these little planes. The rest of the engine-control—spark and so on—is like the engine you learned on a Jolls biplane. That’s enough for a first lesson. Now try her.”

He started the engine, stepped back to a passenger-seat, and apparently went to sleep. Hike pushed the right lever cautiously forward, and up shot the machine—up, up, easily, swiftly, the trees and houses, spread out beneath him, fading into a mist. Then he turned in a long awkward circle, and planed easily down. He quivered as he felt the aeroplane obey him. He wanted to go on forever. He wanted to try to make a landing. But he wouldn’t take any chances on wrecking the tetrahedral on her first trial trip.

So he motioned to Martin Priest to take control again, and settled back into a passenger-seat, whistling his happiness.

They landed in a field outside of Monterey. The ranchero who owned it came rushing up—and in less than ten minutes Lieutenant Adeler had bought that field from him, for an aviation-course.

Before nightfall, the Lieutenant had telegraphed to San Diego for the two hundred and thirty horse-power Kulnoch engine which, he told Martin Priest, a crank aviator down there had for sale. The lieutenant sent Hike to buy the lumber for an aerodrome, and led Martin Priest to a barber, to get his hair cut. (But Priest refused to get any better clothes. “Let all the rest of the money you want to spare go in on the tetrahedral,” he said.)

Within a week, the new engine had arrived and been put into the aeroplane, while a rough shed had been built.

Then Hike heard that Captain Willoughby Welch was going to leave in a couple of days, though it was nearly a month before he was due to report to the Army Board of Aviation—which would spend a million on purchasing some sort of aeroplane. Hike and Jack Adeler had told the Captain nothing about the arrival of the Priest tetrahedral yet, wishing to surprise him after the new engine was installed.

But now Hike rushed over to the Captain’s quarters, and begged him to take a look at the Hustle. The Captain refused, laughing in his face. The most that he would promise was to come back and take a look at her before going on to Washington. He would have to be back for a day or so, anyway, he said.

Hike was much discouraged. But he went on working with Priest and the Lieutenant. It was Hike who suggested a spring for the throttle-foot-bar, so that the aviator could take his feet off the bar, if he wished.

The Lieutenant had to go up to Benicia Arsenal, to inspect some wireless material for Army transports. This, decided Martin Priest, would be a good time for him to drive down to his valley in the San Francisquito mountains, and get some belongings. So Hike and Poodle were left alone. They slept at the aerodrome, to protect the tetrahedral from sight-seers. All the while, Hike was looking for a good excuse to fly her.

CHAPTER V
THE WRECK OF THE YACHT

Hike was seated by the Hustle one windy afternoon, finishing rewinding the fastening of a small interior strut, or prop, when Poodle came rushing up, returning from town.

“Hike,” he cried, “there’s a yacht going to pieces down the coast. Belongs to a rich guy that lives at Pacific Grove. She’s sending out an S.O.S. by wireless. The Presidio wireless caught it. Her operator says she ran onto a ledge down near Sur—how far is that? About twenty miles down the coast? There’s big swells after that storm yesterday, and they can’t launch a boat. Besides, the yacht’s stuck on a long slippery ledge that’s hard to land on.”

“Where’s the revenue cutter?” asked Hike.

“Gone north.”

“Well,” said Hike, very calmly, “well, looks to me as if we’d have to save ’em—folks on yacht.”

“Us? How?” Poodle looked disturbed.

“Haven’t we got the best aeroplane in the world right here? I guess swells won’t bother the Hustle much.”

“Us—alone in an aeroplane?” wailed Poodle. “And me never been up in one any time? Jiminy, you ain’t serious, are you, Hike?”

Hike looked so quiet that Poodle, much confused at the prospect, knew he was serious. Hike had already started filling the Hustle’s fuel tank with gasoline, after finishing the strut-fastening while he was talking.

“Get that long rope that came on the engine,” Hike ordered.

“All right, Geerawld,” sighed Poodle. “’F I’m going to get killed, I might’s well insult you while I have the chance.” He trotted out and found the rope, singing “Geerawld, brave HEro, brave HEro,” in a most cheerful manner. He was frightened at the prospect of his first aeroplaning, with so young an aviator as Hike, but once he admitted that, he stopped worrying about it, and wanted to get the first part of the ride over.

“Coil the rope there—uh—well—amidships,” said Hike. “Come on, now—shove!”

Perspiring and grunting, with their feet slipping on the turf floor of the aerodrome, they pushed out the big machine, then stood resting.

“Scared?” quizzed Hike.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, I’ll tell you now—you’d better know it if you’re going up with me. I’ve been running this tetrahedral for a week. Priest and I kept it quiet because the Lieutenant thinks I’m too young to run one, and Father’d be scared blue if he knew I was doing it. I don’t want to frighten him, and so I want to be a good, safe, crackerjack aviator before he knows. So keep still about this flight. But don’t worry. Why, one night—dark night, too—I flew this thing clear up to San Francisco—about a hundred and fifty miles the course we took—and circled over the city. And Priest never touched the levers except for a couple of minutes, while we were landing. All aboard.”

“Right!” said Poodle. Very gingerly, as though he were afraid of breaking something, Poodle crawled into the passenger-seat beside the aviator’s and stammered, “Gee, I don’t like the promenade deck on this liner. Too narrow for playing tag.”

Hike swung easily into his seat, snapped on the self-starter, and grasped the levers, shouting, “We’ll be down there by one o’clock.”

The machine bobbed roughly over the start, like a frightened hen with wings outspread, and launched beautifully. Hike, happy at being up in the brisk breeze and bright sunshine, hummed a little song to himself, and swung the Hustle southward.

Poodle held his breath and waited.

For five minutes, they followed the coast-line, at sixty miles an hour—an easy speed for the Hustle, with her powerful engine; then Hike struck the clutch in the second notch.

At the second speed, they whirled at a hundred miles an hour. They rocked and bumped on the air-currents coming up between cliffs. Poodle held his cap before his face, trying to catch his breath, and clung to a strut with his other hand. He was too frightened to look down at the cliffs, that rushed like a black streak beneath them, but he kept arguing with himself, “Now, Poodle, me boy, now Poodle, cheer up. You’re a nice kid, Poodle, and you’ll sure get a golden harp, even if you do get killt!”

In fifteen minutes, they were over the barren coast near Sur, and Hike made out the wrecked yacht—a long, low line of white-painted hull, with masts and stack tilting far over on the ledge where she stuck, smashed by heavy surf that was breaking over her. A man was tied to the mast-head, waving a signal flag wildly at the Hustle. A little group of people clung to the upper rail of the yacht, watching, waiting, chilled and wet.

Hike slowed down and let the Hustle hover over the wreck, looking curiously down at the white faces that peered up at him, from amid spray. A huge comber swept over them—and one man was carried away. Shrieks and wails came up to him through the thunder of the surf, as he shut off the motor for a second.

With a quick glance, he studied out the landing places nearby. Between the wreck and the shore there was only a wave-swept ledge of rock. The shore itself was mostly composed of sheer black cliffs that ran straight down into the water. Up these terrible walls the waves ran; up ten—fifteen—twenty feet, and crashed down again, leaving the rocks shining with water. But at one spot, the shore ran in, leaving a triangle of nearly dry beach, from which a man could climb up the cliffs to safety.

That was enough for Hike. “Let that rope hang in big loop—so—” he yelled to Poodle. “Fasten two ends to strut. Tight. Reg’lar anchor-knot. Let loop hang below machine.”

As Poodle obeyed, Hike hovered directly over the wreck, in the smallest circles he could manage, and at the slowest rate he could make the Hustle go.

The faster an aeroplane skates over her thin crust of air—like a boy on thin ice—the safer she is. But with the Hustle’s many planes, she could hover, like a gull over a crumb in the water.

Yelling down to the people twenty feet below, waving, he made them understand that they were to wrap themselves, one by one, in the loop of the dangling rope. Finally, as the rope swept over the deck, a tall man in a reefer caught it, sat in the loop as if it were a trapeze, and was carried out over the waves, his dangling feet kicking violently.

Keeping her speed down, Hike slowly swung across to the triangle of beach and dipped. The man slipped down his trapeze—safe! on dry land!

He yelled twice, for joy, then staggered toward the cliff and began to climb. Already Hike was circling back to the wreck. As he passed the cliff, the left end of the machine missed it by only three feet. Even Hike shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if he had run full tilt into the cliff, and crumpled up the Hustle.

But he drove back to the wreck, and again some one—a woman, this time, terrified, and twice missing the rope before she climbed into the trapeze—was taken ashore.

The wreck was fast breaking up, and Hike hurried as much as he could. While carrying some one, he had to take it slow, but on his return trips he hurled the Hustle out into the gale as though he were racing.

There were thirty persons on the wreck. As he landed the seventeenth (who was the yacht-owner) on the safe beach, he was thinking hard. Two things he had noticed; that the tide was filling up the triangle of beach, so that his passengers had to climb up out of dangerous undertow that now surged over what had been safe land; and that he had to hurry, because the fragile yacht was fast breaking up.

Yes, he had to hurry—but he didn’t want to run into the cliffs he had barely missed. He thrust the elevating plane sharply up, and shot toward the top of the rock-wall so straight that the tetrahedral seemed to stand on her tail.

Poodle clutched the sides of his seat. He saw his feet up as high as his head, and felt as though he were falling backwards. He gasped, and before he had finished gasping, his heart missed a beat.

For—still standing on her tail—the Hustle was caught in a terrible flaw of wind, and hurled a hundred feet up into the air. A breaker had brought in a draft that, shooting up through a treacherous gap in the cliffs, became a treacherous whirlwind.

Hike’s heart thumped, too. He wished that Martin Priest were at the levers. But he kept hold of himself. He turned down the elevating planes; then raised them slightly, then shot them down again; and rode over the column of lifting air into a calm space.

He swung back to the wreck, determined to make quicker work of the rest of the rescue. The waves were increasing and the yacht could not stand much more.

He beckoned Poodle, and shouted to him “Going to land on yacht. You drop off first time I circle. Here, take revolver—my back pocket. If people scared, threaten ’em. Make ’em pile planks so I can land. Make ’em get in—all of ’em—when I land. Make ’em stay quiet when I start.”

“All r-r-r-right.”

They circled over the yacht. Poodle, the revolver in his teeth, slid down the dangling rope and fell on the slippery sloping deck of the yacht. Along her terribly listed hull, water was running free. Poodle clung to the lower rail, pulled off his socks and his trim fashionable tan shoes, and staggered up the deck. The group of thirteen men (all the women were off) watched him curiously.

Not one, except a cabin-boy, of these people, but what was many years older than plump Poodle. Any one of the sturdy Norwegian sailors could have broken him in two. But when he yelled “Pile up these boats—tear up that wrecked wheelhouse—make landing stage for aeroplane,” they jumped to obey.

With Poodle tugging at planks beside the gold-braided sailing-master and a ragged fireman in overalls, with even the cabin-boy climbing along the wet deck in his drenched white jacket, they hastily piled a rude platform, with a capstan for support.

Hike was hovering in long easy circles, overhead. When Poodle waved and shouted, Hike swung astern, and came down, with the motor stopped. Slipping and skidding on the wet planking, the Hustle went clean off the platform, and plunged toward the sea, while the sailors shrieked in horror. A great wave broke on the wreck, and covered the aeroplane with a cloud of spray, but through it Hike glided, started his motor, circled about, constantly rising, then again stopped his motor and planed down, easily, landing on the farther edge of the rough platform.

He was hoarse from shouting through the roar of motor and waves, but as Poodle rushed up to him, with his round face shining with gladness—and spray!—Hike croaked, “Run out planks—runway.”

On blocks and boxes, the crew propped up planks along which the wheels of the Hustle’s chassis could run in starting.

“Get ’em in—all!” shouted Hike.

“Get in—all of you. Fill up those three seats, and crowd on that freight-platform,” bellowed Poodle.

The sailing-master was a commanding figure, even in his drenched uniform. He was large and dignified and used to ordering people about. But he came up to Poodle as though that youth owned the yacht and the sea.

“Isn’t the space too small for all—?” he began respectfully.

“No! Get in. Quick All’v you!” roared Poodle, leaning back sturdily on his short plump legs. Lean, sinewy Hike grinned—tired though he was from the struggle with the winds—to see his chum taking command. The sailing-master hesitated. He looked from Poodle’s chubby young face to the great flying-machine, then back, then suddenly shrugged his shoulders and roared to his crew:

“Get in there. All of you.... I’ll follow them,” he finished, turning back to Poodle.

Packed like herrings in a barrel, the crew clung together on the platform aft of the aviator’s seat, where once two thousand pounds of Martin Priest’s baggage had ridden. The sailing-master slipped into one seat, Poodle into another, and they were ready.

Hike started the engine, and the tetrahedral ran along the flimsy planks which had been laid for a runway. She bounced off them, raised, whirled out, kicked up spray, and then shot up, wavering.

Hike had never been so much on the job before in all his life. He was frightened, for fourteen lives besides his depended on him. He almost deflected the elevator, which would have sent them down into the sea. But he kicked himself into courage, and studied the air-currents made by sea and cliffs.

With all this load, and their bad start from slippery planks, the Hustle was wobbly and sulky. But he worked her up, up, toward the top of the cliffs, when he wanted—oh! so awfully! to let her run low. He cleared the top of the cliffs, ran down the wind, and, shutting off the motor, made a safe landing in a stretch of chaparral.

The sailing-master crawled out and silently held out his hand to Hike, then to Poodle. As he did so, the owner of the yacht rushed up, and held out his hand, too. Then there was a rush of people, while the owner’s wife began to cry with relief.

“Please tell me—now—what I can do in return,” began the owner. “I’m pretty well off—”