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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Adventure, 3 June 1918, with "Safe and Sane"
CHIEF PETTY OFFICER RADER smiled slowly, almost paternally, and altogether grimly as the girl by his side chattered on with gay irresponsibility. That so composite smile might be analyzed to betoken quite a lot of emotions. Tender indulgence, for one thing, of an older, steadier man for the bubbling spirits of a young girl; pride for the prize which had fallen to him in open competition with younger men; a comfortable feeling of confidence; and a whole lot of other things. But the grimness was the tight-lipped smile which presently grows on those men whose duty is entered in the Service records as "extra hazardous."
Qualified Navy flyer and hangar chief of Coast Patrol Unit E, life in these strenuous days was a very serious matter to C.P.O. Rader. There were other flyers in the unit, some qualified, and some, under instruction, young dare-devils all; but the final responsibility for the fitness of every one of the nine hydros in the station lay on the shoulders of the hangar chief—and the hangar chief was a man who took no chances.
Presently it was dimly borne in on his wandering mind, immersed in that troublesome wing alignment of H-7, that a long silence had displaced the girl's carelesss prattle. Instantly he was solicitous.
"What's the deep study, li'l girl?"
But the girl seemed to experience difficulty in giving voice to her thoughts. The man had to coax confidence into her. Suddenly she unburdened herself.
"I wish you'd give it up, Joe," she dared.
"Give up!" wondered Rader aghast. "Give up what, girl?"
"This—this aviation business."
The man was immediately comfortingly persuasive.
"Why, girlie, what's the matter now, wanting me to quit the business? You've never been afraid before."
"No, it's not that, Joe; I'm not afraid for you. It's—well I wish you'd get transferred to something else."
Chief Rader was a man of single ideas. The girl's disclaimer did not impress him at all. He proceeded along the line of dominant thought.
"You've nothing to worry about, girl. 'Tisn't as if I was a stunt flyer. I never get up and pull fool stunts in the air; I fly strictly according as the flag for the day says. Even when it's single hops and I've got no passenger I never exceed orders."
"Yes, I know," the girl almost sobbed. "That's just it. You nev—oh, I wish you'd give it up!"
The enigmatic disconnection conveyed nothing to Rader. He patted her encouragingly on the shoulder.
"There now, take a hold on yourself, Gracie girl, and forget all about it. Give it up! Why we're figuring to start the little nest with the fifty per cent, increase on my pay which I draw on account of the 'extra hazardous'! And you know that it's a soft graft, coz there's no danger nowadays any more in straightaway stuff. Come along, cheer up and kiss me good-by. I can't snatch but half an hour out o' dinner time; those busses are crankier 'n a gas blimp these days."
Rader, like all "plane" men, professed a deep-rooted abhorrence for the intricate and unwieldly lighter-than-air dirigibles, though he well knew, to the cost of many gray hairs, what an impossible task it was to keep even three of his nine machines fit for duty all at one time.
"Five thousand aviators in a year!" He barked a short laugh as he hurried into the wire-fenced enclosure of the station. "Five hundred'll be stepping some! But I guess Unit E'll come to scratch. They're good boys, I've got, even if they are a bit wild."
And Chief Rader was very close to being right. Five thousand was a stupendous figure when it came to speaking of trained flyers. But the Navy was doing its strenuous share. Only the pick of the long gray ships came into aviation; the best machinists; the best observers; the best educated men; and incomparably the physical best. With the help of God, then, and of very many tried, selected, two-and three-term men like Rader the thing might be barely possible.
The chief hurried to the strip of smooth beach which lay behind the great steel-frame asbestos-walled hangars. "Turn to" after dinner had not sounded yet, but the crews of Numbers Five and Eight, the only two machines in commission for the time being, were already grouped about the long runways which sloped gently from the boardwalk down to the water. Class H, the Navy rated these machines; that is to say, hydro-biplanes mounted on a central pontoon with subsidiary floats at the end of each lower plane. They rested each on a low, flat, four-wheeled truck at the head of their respective runways.
"Good, lads!" commended Rader. "Run 'em in and beach 'em. I don't suppose your engines need warming up, but just give the sticks a spin anyhow."
He turned to H-6, standing on its truck just outside the hangar door with a laughing, indignantly vociferous group around it. The center of the disturbance was a lean, slenderly-built young man with a careless, astonishingly boyish face who wore a regulation flying helmet with heavy goggles pushed back over his forehead.
"'Lo, Chief," he greeted with the easy familiarity of extreme youth. "What's matter with the buzzer this time? Why don't she tick?"
Rader smiled with his habitual slow indulgence.
"Putting in a Christensen self-starter, so overconfident boys won't get their knuckles rapped spinning a propeller."
So far from being abashed, the youth turned on the others and crowed aloud.
"There y'are!" he jeered joyously. "Jes what I was tellin' yuh poor jays! Got ta have new-fangled push-button starters now 'coz yuh amatoor Service flyers can't twirl a seven-foot stick with a meazly ninety-horse behind it."
"Amateur!" growled one of the men on whom the rough joshing bit deep, "if you'd seen 'Heinie' Meyers heaved over the tool shack with an arm an' a leg an' three ribs broke when Number Five back-fired on him you'd be glad for a starter yourself."
The reminder sobered the youngster for a few seconds. But his was the happy imperviousness of irrepressible youth. In a moment his mood of tormenting raillery returned. He grinned slyly as he picked up the thread.
"Anyway, a regular flyer don't get in the way of no propellers. Now I got a eight-foot stick on my scout with a hunnerd 'n twenny-five brake horse-power, an' I never been beaned yet. No sirree, a regular flyer don't have to have no starter. One o' these days I'm comin' over an' show you guys some real flyin'. I'll—"
The rest of his grandiloquent oration was howled down by a discordant and prolonged chorus in imitation of blaring horns. When the youth had subsided, beaten, and the clamor had ceased—
"Hark to that kid spread his wings," muttered H-5's mechanician admiringly.
But there was bitterness in the tone of the qualified airman in charge of the machine.
"Yeah," he conceded discontentedly. "We'll hand it to you, 'Bud' Larsen; you're a crackerjack an' all, we'll admit. But there's others could fly too—if they was let."
RIGHT there the hangar chief thought it was time to take a hand. Bud Larsen was one of those anomalies of the Service, a civilian instructor. He had made an enviable name for himself doing sensational exhibition work, and he was now engaged by the Government to try and impart some of his phenomenal knowledge of balance to others, and incidentally to connect Unit E, whenever the occasion should arise, with Units D and F on either side along the coast, using a fast, light, land machine with that boasted eight-foot stick and the hundred and twenty-five brake horse-power.
As a civilian, he was inclined to view with impatience the restrictions of discipline and to torment diabolically those less fortunate ones who were subject to the bonds.
Such an example was very bad indeed for the souls of prospective Naval aviators. Young men of the highest spirit, and possessed of that American something which has made the Escadrille in France what it is, they chafed under the regulations which imposed certain strictly defined limits on their maneuvers in the air.
Chief Petty Officer Rader, then, in the absence of the two flight lieutenants who commanded the unit, felt that it was up to him to preach the age-old and ever-necessary gospel. He spoke with slow emphasis.
"What you've got to get into your noodle, young feller, is that in the Navy we fly strictly according to orders. We don't bank more'n forty degrees because regulations forbid. We don't climb more'n twenty-five because our officers say so. We don't nose dive and pancake our landings because the official angle of safety for class H type N-9 has been figured out at forty-five.
"Regulations say that in the Navy we fly safe and sane. And lemme tell you this, boy: as long as you're flying for the Navy, you'll fly according to regulations." He glared meaningly at the younger, impatient spirits. "Same as the rest of us do. Without kicking either."
Having expounded his religion, the doctrine of inexorable discipline, he strode to the machines on the beach. There was a short silence after him, and then a rising wave of discontented murmurings.
"Yeah, that's the trouble with old 'Safe-an'-Sane.' He'll never dast take a chance outside o' regulations—an' he'll never make a flyer!"
"No more'll none of you at the same rate," taunted Bud Larsen.
A growl of discontent showed what the younger spirits thought.
"Well," Bud shook the care from his youthful shoulders, "'s none o' my funeral. Le's see this self-starter thing anyway. I'm thinkin' o* gettin' one installed, an' then I'll show you guys how to land on Domino Rock out there."
Immediately howls of derisive contention went up from the men.
"Hark at that boy shoot the gas!"
"Domino Rock! Why she ain't but thirty-foot wide at the best, an' a bare hundred an' twenty long!"
"Well? I'm a regular flyer, I want you dubs to understand."
"Regular nut, ye mean. S'pos'n even ye could shoot for center o' thirty-foot track— which is some stunt, kid, lemme tell yuh— ye'd need full hundred for yer run before stopping: and there's that step a full two-feet high bang across which would smash yuh up to toothpicks."
Domino Rock was just as the indignant airmen had described it. A long, flat-topped ledge about a mile out from shore and awash at high tide, with the additional prohibitive feature of that abrupt step, it would surely be a crazy stunt even for the most reckless young fool to attempt. But Bud Larsen had all the nerve of the devil as well as all the supreme confidence of uncurbed youth.
"I'll show you slobs what flying is one o' these days," he laughed.
And again the imitation of Gabriel's trumpet drowned him out.
"Gangway!" called a sudden voice.
The men scattered and stood to attention as the two officers of the unit came down the concrete pathway. Rader slopped up out of the water with squelchy shoes.
"Five an' Eight O.K., sir. Wind, eighteen miles an' steady northwest."
"Good. I think we'd better make it double hops then."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Rader megaphoned through his hands to the signal and observation tower— "Double hops!"
The square blue and whitechecked flag ran smoothly up. Then—
"Arnold and Domler, break out helmets and goggles for instruction flights."
The crews of H-5 and 8, four men to each, in bathing suits, maneuvered their machines 'round till they pointed out into the bay and the sterns of the pontoons grated on the sandy beach. The men under instruction scrambled into the front seats. The officers followed more leisurely with a careless disregard of personal inspection which was an astounding piece of negligence for men about to trust their lives to the slender efficiency of struts and brace wires.
But, then, it was C.P.O. Rader who had O.K'd them. His confidential report, that thing which the enlisted man never sees, was an open sheet to the officers in charge. Slow-thinking and deliberate, he had absorbed discipline and the traditions of the Service till the one salient characteristic stood out against his name: "completely reliable." That was why he was hangar chief of Unit E.
"All clear," he called now.
"All clear," repeated the airmen in charge.
The chief mechanicians threw their cranks over the compression and jumped nimbly from the pontoons. With the roar of machine guns the two machines glided from the shore and gathered speed, throwing a stinging deluge of spray at the men behind; and another strenuous afternoon had commenced.
C.P.O. Rader watched the machines one after the other porpoise, plane, and rise clear, and then he turned into the hangar with a particularly grim and a suddenly tired look on his face.
THAT evening he walked again with the merrily prattling girl whose choice for himself was still such an unbelievable marvel to him. This time it was his turn to fall grimly silent and thoughtful; and, in natural inversion, it was the girl who asked him with quick solicitude what was the matter. Once, she asked, and twice, and a third time with growing anxiety before he blurted out—
"I know why you want me to quit the flying game."
The girl started, and he felt the pressure of her hand on his arm contracting in a sudden grip. He continued with hard determination. It was difficult for him to say this thing:
"You think that I have a yellow streak, that I daren't take a chance in the air!"
"Oh, Joe!" The girl's cry was as a sudden stab of pain. "Never! You know I'd never think that of you!"
"Yes," the chief went on bitterly. "I've heard the boys talking. And you saw young Larsen at the dance last night, saw him a whole lot as a matter of fact, and I know what he thinks. The kid don't mean bad, but he just has to talk."
The girl hung her head, and slowly, reluctantly the words came from her:
"It's—that's just it, Joe. I—I know that you could do anything that any of the others might, anything at all. But I can't bear to think that they say you're—that they say the things they do. If—"
She stammered, hestitated, and broke down.
A steady arm slipped 'round her, and the quiet voice was suddenly vibrant with comforting reassurance.
"We-ell, girlie? If what?"
"If—oh, Joe, if you'd only show—just once, dear; you'd never have to do it again."
Now Joe Rader was very much in love with this bright-eyed girl whom a wonderful Providence had sent into his life, in love after the silent intense manner of the strong man who has outgrown the first enthusiasms of youth. Youth would surely have taken extravagant oath instantly to establish unassailable position by deeds fraught with valor and foolishness. Rader never hesitated. It never occurred to him that there was any temptation to hesitate. The slow, serious smile broke out again.
"I wish I could, little girl. I wish to Heaven I could. Don't you think that it hits me hard? But—regulations! There's no margin allowed."
That was Joe Rader, Chief Petty Officer, U.S. Navy. Trained, disciplined, "completely reliable." The girl had hardly expected any more.
"Well, then, Joe dear, leave it. For my sake, Joe. Get transferred to something else. Never mind the ten per cent.; we'll only have to wait a little longer."
Again it never occurred to that direct-thinking man of single purpose that there could be any cause for hesitation.
"Girl o' mine, don't you see I can't do that? There's five thousand aviators needed by our country, needed bad—and I've got to do my bit training them."
The girl was silent for a long time. Then she uttered a long, tremulous sigh. It meant hopelessness, resignation—and perhaps just the beginnings of a deep thankfulness that this man was just as he was.
BUSY, crowded days followed. Chief Rader stuck grimly to doing his bit toward that five thousand. But, in the face of what he knew, he grew more silent and self-contained among the men; and in spite of what he knew, since it was his duty, he preached ever more insistently the gospel of unquestioning obedience to regulations. The men shrugged their shoulders and smiled, scornfully, behind his back; and young Bud Larsen shrugged his shoulders and smiled, carelessly, when occasion offered, at the wistful-eyed girl—for he was very young, and she was very beautiful.
And Chief Rader saw it all, and the irony of it bit into his soul, and he, too, smiled, sometimes, tight-lipped and grim; but his steady course of unswerving adherence to orders and of seeing that others adhered to them too never deviated for an instant. And presently another student flyer passed all the prescribed tests and qualified. And then another. And then the two officers smiled and slapped each other on the back and talked boastfully of a record for Unit E.
AND then in the natural sequence of events came a day when everything went wrong; one of those days on which, in spite of all human efficiency, accident followed accident through the sheer inherent cussedness of inanimate objects, that malicious ill luck which takes ninety per cent, of the toll of lives in modern aviation.
First, an unseen flaw in the drop-forged steel of a connecting rod which had stood the pound and drive of the piston to the utmost limit finally went the way of all flaws, and the broken stem, whirling at a speed of fourteen hundred revolutions per minute, instantly smashed a hole through the crank-case big enough to put one's head through and then proceeded to flail the whole engine loose from its bed.
By the grace of God the man who was up had been under an iron discipline for long enough not to lose his head. Unconsciously the memory of oft-repeated orders asserted itself and he "buttoned off" and glided with a dead engine to safety.
Of course, no human foresight could have foreseen the thing; but since hangar chiefs are for the purpose of being held responsible, and since human lives were at stake, it was a bad mark against Chief Rader.
Then one of the seventy-three listed ailments which a high-speed motor is subject to suddenly smote H-9, and she refused to develop her required power; elimination out of seventy-three troubles, most of which are obscure, takes time. In the meanwhile Number Nine was out of commission. Another bad mark.
The third blow fell on Rader himself. There was a gusty breeze which was growing stifler; but he had gone up in H-6, the machine with the self-starter, his pet, giving instruction to an advanced pupil in the handling of controls in "choppy" air. The difficult part, the lesson and the landing in the running sea, safely accomplished, when it came to the easy finale of planing in to the beach, a sudden side gust got under one wing, heeled the machine over till the outer wing float dipped, then immediately swung it 'round on the pivot, and the chief had to submit to the ignominy of being hauled ashore by the crew to a tail-end finish with the nose pointing out to sea.
It was a little thing in itself, but since extreme skill might have avoided it, Rader felt humilitated infinitely more than over the two previous mishaps.
The final straw came when the machinist in charge of the forty-knot Viper, the rescue-boat, came in with a carefully filled out report on his great Van Blerck, another of those fastidious high-speed engines. Rader forgot that he was a highly efficient machine and swore out loud just like a plain human being. He grabbed the report and strode in search of his commanding officer.
"Viper's out of commission, sir. The motorman reports that he'll need five or six hours to fix the trouble."
The officer bit his hp and frowned. This was a nuisance. The rescue boat, in keeping with the official program of safety, was supposed to be in instant readiness with a hospital assistant and a pulmotor on board in case there should be an accident out on the water somewhere. He looked critically up at the clouds.
"Hm! Fracto-nimbus at about eight hundred feet, with a rising gale," he muttered. Then: "All right. Better secure for the day then. Report to me at my quarters when you're through."
RADER strode back to the hangars grumbling impatiently to himself. He hated these enforced delays. And it was visitors' day, too; and he took a pride in having something to show to the outside public who were fortunate enough to obtain passes to come in and view the practice work from within certain very strictly defined limits. Besides, it stimulated recruiting; and the country was still very far short from those five thousand specimens of physical perfection who should be judged fit for this most exacting branch of the Service.
And the machine crews, though it meant a holiday for them, were not less unwilling than himself. Their spirit, as the chief maintained proudly, was right. The work of securing was proceeding with swift efficiency when a faint distant hum from overhead attracted the men's attention. Far away at a high level a black dot dipped and bucketed through the gusts and increased in size with astonishing swiftness.
"There's Bud comin' in from D," some one sang out; and the men interrupted their work to watch the flight with professional appraisal.
The fast scout "crabbed" dizzily across the air currents with a drift of at least one in seven, but even so the judgment was perfect. Directly above the station it made a sudden steep bank and turned into the wind. There it seemed to hover on an even .keel for appreciable seconds; then it dipped slowly over and swooped down like some immense eagle in an almost perpendicular nose dive.
Straight down, out of sight behind Number One hangar the dive continued, and the newer hands felt a sudden intake of the breath. But there came no disastrous crash from the landing field behind the building. The machine must have flattened out within a few feet of the ground, and against that wind there could have been but a very short landing run, for in a few minutes the reckless pilot came 'round the corner pushing the goggles up from his eyes and grinning frankly pleased with himself.
"Well, fellers," he chuckled. "Some li'l dip, no, yes? How's the world this bright day? What's doin'? Why ain't the sky full o' machines?"
"Old Safe-an'-Sane has passed the order to secure. Viper's on the fritz; an' it's too windy anyway."
"Windy!" the boy scorned at once. "What's the matter with yuh Navy aviators? Didn't cha see me jes now? This ain't but a pleasant breeze!"
"Aw, lay off o' that 'Navy aviators' stuff," growled a tormented flyer. "We got orders, 's all there is to it. 'Sides, you can't monkey with a hydro, with all its extra pontoon weight an' all that head resistance, same's you can with your high-powered land scout."
"Can't yuh?" the boy teased, "mebbe yuh amatoors can't. But I'd show yuh. I tell yuh I'm a regular—"
"Come ahead there! Lively with those machines!" Rader's authoritative roar from the hangar door broke in on the group.
"Comin' away!" shouted the men, and put their shoulders to the trucks.
The boy was left standing alone, disappointed in his delightful game of provocation. He was bubbling over with the exhilaration of his recent really clever flight. His spirits needed an outlet. There was a little group of outsiders over there. To him they represented the general public. Exhibition was more than his second nature.
The adulation of the mob was meat and drink to him, the only real compensation for his reckless daring. Particularly, moreover, there stood that peachy girl who showed such a perverse preference for the steady, unspectacular hangar chief. For the moment he was quite unnoticed. The irrepressible spirit of lawlessness came out and danced behind his eyes.
The first that the hangar men knew was the sudden unmistakable bl-l-ipp bl-l-ipp which a Christensen self-starter makes as it fires the cylinders with its equally unmistakable trail of blue gas smoke, and as they started up to look H-6 glided smoothly from the beach; and almost immediately the great elevating rudders flapped down and up and down again, "porpoising" to lift the pontoon to its planing angle at which it would skim over the water and gather the necessary speed to enable it to rise.
A startled yell of "Hey, the kid's gone off with Number Six!" brought every man to the doors of the hangars. Chief Rader looked helplessly after the receding machine for a choking minute. Then:
"Blast the boy!" he swore. "Orders were to secure, and regulations say that after that order not even a tool truck is to stay out! He'll have to go on report; that's all there is to it."
But Bud Larsen was long past hearing or caring for hangar chiefs. He headed the machine into the wind and lifted her with beautiful skill. Against that wind he climbed at a startling angle for such a low-powered machine.
"Golly, he'll stall her an' tail slidel" gasped a novice.
But the young dare-devil seemed to judge with uncanny accuracy just how much lift the wind would give and how much strain the engine would stand. He climbed steadily up and out over the water till he reached a safe exhibition level of about fifteen hundred feet, while the whole station stood and watched. There he turned on a giddy bank and'shot suddenly away with the wind at a terrific speed as if shot from a gun. His speed indicator whirled well up over the hundred mark.
Again he turned and battled against the air, fluttering and dipping like a leaf. He was a good mile from shore now. At that distance he seemed to crawl. When he was abreast of the station again there ensued the most amazing series of stunts. The machine dived and dipped and went off on the wing just like any light exhibition plane.
Then presently the watchers saw the nose dip slightly to gather speed and then turn sharply upward. Up it climbed into the perpendicular, and then the speed fell off and it slipped back on its tail and down. A gasp came from the outsiders who looked on. But the cool-headed flyer never faltered. He caught up his machine again out of its dangerous position within a hundred feet; and again he tried the crazy stunt, and again.
"Phew! The looney nut's tryin' to loop!" muttered the professionals from the hangars.
"He'll never do it with all that pontoon weight."
"Nope. Too much wind on the rise. He'll bust his neck sure."
Their attitude was remarkable for its lack of any extreme enthusiasm and its cool, almost impersonal appraisal of the chances of sudden death. Not that they were callous, any of them; but this was their own job. These men who took their own lives up into the air every other day or so had grown away from a display of most of the human emotions.
THE lunatic up in the sky grew tired of his ineffectual attempts to achieve the spectacular impossible. He began to circle downward in a wide spiral. It looked as though he had decided to come down at last and face the wrath which awaited him. But Bud Larsen was in blissful, delirious enjoyment of pitting his skill against the clawing hand of Fate. Steeper he banked his spiral, and steeper, and the circle became correspondingly less and less till he was hurtling 'round at an angle of sixty degrees.
"Corkscrewing, by golly!"
"And in a gale!"
"Holy snakes, but that kid can fly."
Yet steeper became the angle and the circle narrowed down to a few feet, till suddenly the machine was whirling 'round on its own nose as a pivot and swiftly downwards.
The outsiders just gazed in wonder. But this time it was from the hangars that a shout of dismay came.
"By God, he's gone into a nose spin!"
"Right over the rock too," piped the high treble of an excited novice.
"Done for, by golly! Look, look!"
By this time even the outsiders behind the restricting line realized that something was suddenly very wrong. A nose spin is the most deadly thing known to modern aviation. No skill may avail to bring the machine out of that terrible vortex. Sheer luck and a chance side gust may do it sometimes; but the aviator can do nothing but pull all his controls at once and pray for something to get a hold on the air. Bud Larsen never lost his head. He worked every thing movable in the pilot's seat; but his luck had been overworked. It was played out.
In a few more seconds the spinning plane crashed into the sea, missing Domino Rock by inches only. Even so, "crashed," is the proper word to use; for water, as every hydro flyer says, "is terrible hard stuff to hit if you hit it hard enough." The machine crumpled into a shapeless mess just as if it had hit hard earth. For a few seconds the wreck was just a smother of foam in the high-running sea, and then a dark object seemed to detach itself from the ruin and float helplessly, visible at intervals on the wave crests.
Already a man had snatched the eight-power prism binoculars from the signal locker.
"I got him!" he yelled. "There! There again! He's made the edge o' the rock! But he don't move. He just lays. He's gone again! No he ain't. I see him. But he'll be swept off by them seas surer'n thunder!"
"Get a jump with the speed boat!" shouted an excited voice.
But the rescue boat's disablement had been the very reason of the order to secure.
"The motor dory!"
But this was a matter where minutes counted. Every now and then a great sea broke over the ledge and the onlookers gasped. The motor dory would take half an hour to buck those seas for a mile. Aimless orders and futile advice began to fly back and forth, the usual trouble with the enlisted man when the accustomed voice of authority is absent. Instinctively they began to look for their leader.
But authority was just then behind Number One hangar, tugging frantically at one wing of the scout machine to maneuver it into a favorable position.
An urgent hand fell on his arm, and his girl stood before him, breathless, with frightened eyes.
"Joe! What are you going to do?"
The hangar chief looked at her vaguely.
"I don't know," he muttered. "Orders was for no flying; but—gimme a hand with this wing!"
"Joe, stop! You can't go out there. It's—it's impossible!"
"I know, girl; but—thank Almighty Pete he had a self-starter fitted!"
He was climbing into the pilot's seat. Suddenly he sprang back to the ground. He snatched the girl to him and kissed her swiftly. The snappy incisiveness of his voice yearned with a great tenderness.
"Good-by, girl o' mine—in case "
The next instant the roar of the great engine filled the air and drowned out the excited cries from the front of the hangar.
With the strong gale against it, the machine rose off the ground within fifty feet and broke into view 'round the corner of the hangar skimming low and rocking dizzily as the ailerons caught the balance on one side or the other.
"It's the chief!" yelled an amazed voice, as the bare head, minus helmet or goggles, with hair flying wild and the hard, set face staring straight ahead was visible for a moment above the edge of the fuselage.
"Safe-an'-Sane! What'dja know about that!"
"Golly! He's crazy too! But he's got the guts all right."
"There's two machines gone in the same day."
AND while they watched with keen faces, with only a nervous twitch here and there to betray their excitement, and discussed breathlessly his infinitesimal chances of success, the grim man in the hurtling machine headed straight out for the rock and mutterecl to himself—
"Thank Pete the wind's dead right."
And by the mercy of Providence it was. The long slab of rock lay due north and south, and the wind blew from the north. Otherwise that fractional chance would have been entirely outside of human possibility. As it was, the side wind carried the machine just far enough off from the southerly end of the rock to allow for maneuvering. Right opposite this end the watchers saw it bank sharply and head into the gale, which immediately cut its speed down by a full two-thirds.
Here again it seemed that luck was repenting; for low landing speed meant a short run, and that mean, lean rock was none too long. Flying so low that the hungry wave crests seemed to reach out and snatch at the. landing wheels, the machine had to dip but a couple of feet before it lit on that slippery thirty-foot space with beautiful precision. A gasp of relief went up from the hangar crews.
"Thank Pete!" Rader muttered again through set teeth.
The next instant, watching his time like a hawk, he heaved the elevating control back on to his chest. There was just enough speed left, helped by the lift of the head wind, to impart a little jump to the machine. Just over that deadly step. It was a miracle of timing. In another second the machine came to a stop. Rader flung himself out and raced back to the inert figure, washed every minute by a hungry wave. It opened one eye at him.
"Nifty flying, Chief," the boy murmured with a game attempt at his pose of recklessness. "I saw yuh all the way. Couldn't a done better myself."
"You're going on report, son, for disobeying regulations," was all that Chief Petty
Officer Rader growled in a gruff monotone.
"All right, Chief; I ain't kickin'. I—I guess you're a regular flyer though." The voice trailed away and the eye closed weakly.
"— fool!" growled Rader.
And he picked up the limp form with tender care and ran with it to the quivering machine. He tucked it into the front seat, and then jumped down and strained with all his strength to push the machine back as far as the step, for he would need all the run he could get. Again the good gale helped him. Helped him to maneuver the machine back into place. Helped him, to rise clear well within the sixty feet or so of run thus gained.
The rest was "straight flying." In a few more minutes the speed scout landed for the second time that day behind Number One hangar. Two hospital orderlies were already there with a stretcher. Rader's eye lit with approval. Efficiency! His own training! He climbed nimbly from his seat.
"Jump, you fellows," he ordered crisply. "And be gentle with the kid."
The men crowded 'round him and fought with one another to grip him by the hand, hard.
"Safe-an'-Sane, me eye. Unsafe an' insane," was the catchword.
But Chief Petty Officer Rader was troubled with matters of infinitely greater importance than congratulations. He pushed through the enthusiastic mob and strode to where the wondering girl stood, wild-eyed and tremulous.
"Oh, Joe! You shouldn't have done it!" she sobbed. "I never really meant what I said. You shouldn't have done it."
Then that "completely reliable" and most obtuse of men slipped a comforting arm 'round her and, strong in his knowledge of rectitude, said simply:
"Oh, that was all right, girlie. Regulations say that 'in case of emergency, in the absence of officers, the senior petty officer will take command.' So I was duly authorized to act."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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