Roy Rockwood

“ At last there were rifts in the clouds, which began breaking up, giving a sight of the ground.
“We’ve been up here nearly three hours,” announced Hiram, “and the gasoline is giving out.”
A slow glide brought them directly over a large farm. They made out great stacks of hay, and the Ariel settled down like a tired-out bird in the center of these fields.
“There’s a man—with a gun!” Hiram sharply exclaimed.
Dave, alighting, saw a farmer, of middle age. He, indeed, had a gun—but he set this, and a game bag, alongside a haystack, and advanced towards them with no indication of antagonism. ”

“ The searchlight of the Ariel was kept directly upon the Scout, except when a curve, or turn, made this impossible. As Hiram started a drift landwards, he realized that the Ariel was not far behind in the race.
His passenger had slipped loose the seat belt, and showed eager suspense.
“Why don’t you land—why don’t you land! those fellows will be right on our heels in a minute,” he shouted.
“I can’t drop into the tree tops, can I?” challenged Hiram—“well!”
The rebound of the biplane told him that it had been lightened of a burden. His environment demanded his strictest attention to the machine. ”

“ Mr. Brackett had suddenly appeared from among the crowd. With him was the manager of the meet, and two other officials. Hiram fancied that the manufacturer was dilating on the points of the new machine, for he moved his hand about, making a sweeping movement over this and that portion of the beautiful mechanism.
Hiram fixed a look upon the chum of whom he had such good reason to feel proud. Never had the young aviator looked so completely at his best. Dave’s eye was bright, his face bronzed with sunburn. He wore an entirely new outfit. ”

“ It was plainly to be seen that he believed himself the hero of the day. Worthington strutted around followed by his contingent, some of whom were to take part in various minor contests after the first day. It had been depressing to Hiram to note the buoyancy and assurance of this crowd. It nettled him to think that for him the meet, and all appertaining it to, was a hollow farce without his chum. Then came the climax. Nearly all the contesting air craft had reported, and were in full view inside the roped off space near the starter’s box. ”

“ Dave was more satisfied with the Ariel than ever. The perfect piece of mechanism had never “balked” yet. Hiram professed to see new skill and expertness in his gifted chum with every succeeding flight.
“Let’s take a view of the city before we go home,” he suggested, and Dave was nothing loth.
“Doll houses and pigmies; eh?” submitted Hiram, as they flew over the south end of the city. “A little flat patch of the world, down there. Those vessels on the lake look like play-ships. That big skyscraper doesn’t appear much larger than a chicken house. There’s some excitement!” ”

“ The Ariel had been built purposely to meet these exigencies. He doubted if any of the three other machines could go through on any great rate of speed.
“I am sure of one thing,” he reckoned quite confidently; “the Ariel can outdo the Whirlwind two to one in drifting with the wind at its stern.”
“Dave! I say, Dave!” cried Hiram Dobbs breathlessly. “Here comes the Whirlwind!”
“I see,” answered Dave calmly.
“She’s turning, she’s first in rounding for the home run. Can’t you speed up?”
Dave kept his eye on the machine he regarded as his principal rival. ”

“ The one further along, near which the Ariel stood, was now a mass of wispy, shooting blaze. Two others beyond it had also ignited. It was now that the lad ran fastest. His face was hot and blistered as he came up against the tail rudder of the imperiled machine with a force that gave him a rebound.
The smoke and the heat choked and blinded him. He bent his head and gave the running gear a start. He could not see before him now. With desperate resolve Hiram buckled down to his task. The aeroplane, upon which his hopes and interest were fixed so intensely, was in peril. ”

“ CHAPTER XXI
“FIFTY POINTS” “You’ve got something on your mind, Bruce! What is it?” challenged Hiram Dobbs.
“Oh, just thinking,” answered Bruce in a way meant to be off-handed, but palpably evasive and embarrassed.
“You can’t fool me!” insisted Hiram in his persistent fashion. “Ever since you took those diamonds back to the police you’ve been mooning. You don’t mean to tell me you’ve caught the detective-fever?”
“Me!” laughed Bruce. “No more chance of that than of running an airship. I’d better correct one false impression you’ve got, though, Hiram.” ”

“ The Ariel made a sort of leap, as her pilot brought the machine broadside to the fierce breeze. In two minutes the young aviator comprehended, and analyzed, the conditions as would an expert running a yacht.
“A fog is coming up, and it’s misting,” announced Hiram. “We’re not cutting due west, are we?”
“Not on this occasion,” responded Dave coolly. “Hiram, we’ll make time and distance drifting south of the grounds. When we strike the land breeze it will be easier to fight our way back north.” ”

“ I can surely pass for what I pretend to be, if I don’t get where it’s too light,” decided Hiram.
A more industrious “white wings” never worked on the International grounds. Hiram seemed to have eyes for every stray fragment of rubbish. He boldly invaded the precincts of the Syndicate camp. Just inside several hangar’s men were playing cards, smoking and conversing.
“I don’t see anything of Mr. Borden,” soliloquized Hiram disappointedly. “There’s Worthington, though, and his special man, Valdec.” ”

“ Dashaway.”
“You can’t become an airman like Dave,” broke in Hiram, loyally. “There isn’t a man that flies who can come up to him. He’s the champion, and in a class by himself.”
“And that’s the truth,” added Mr. Brackett. “There is only one Dave Dashaway.”
“Then I propose three cheers for him!” cried Bruce.
“Whoop! Hurray! That’s the talk!” burst out Hiram. And then the cheers were given with vigor, and a “tiger” was added.
And here let us say good-bye to Dave Dashaway, Air Champion. ”

“ Why, where should Dave be but in the front ranks at Chicago? A first-class prize meet would be second-class without the aviator who won the trans-Atlantic medal, and looped the loop at Philadelphia ahead of all the competitors, and invented all the new wrinkles in hydro-aeroplane work at Cape May, and——”
“There, there, Hiram—that will do,” interrupted Dave, but smiling indulgently. “From the entrants’ list they send us there will be no ordinary talent at the Chicago meet and no worn-out stunts will pass. We’ve got to better ourselves and prepare for real work, if we expect to make a showing.” ”

“ The Ariel was the very latest model in the aeroplane line. It succeeded the famous Comet. That was the fine machine in which Dave and his friends had made their trip around the world. The Comet had been built more for rough usage and staying power, than for fancy sprints or stunts. It was now an honored relic in the show rooms of the Interstate Aero Company. Only a few weeks before the present introduction of the reader to our young hero, Mr. Brackett had delighted his young protégé by shipping to him, at the Midlothian grounds, the latest model in air craft. ”

“ There was one especial reach of the sterile stretch which Dave had, so to speak, appropriated as his own private training grounds.
“We’re nearly there,” announced Hiram finally. “I don’t see any trace of Dave or the Ariel, though.”
“Maybe he went further—maybe he has returned home,” suggested Bruce.
“We could hardly miss him,” answered Hiram. “There’s the spot where Dave usually descends,” and he fixed his glance on a patch of stunted field poplars. “There’s something lying on the ground. A man? No, a coat, I think,” and the speaker strained his vision, and set the Scout on a sharp volplane. ”

“ Dave had driven onward and upward until they had attained an altitude of five hundred feet. Hiram had been watching a receding speck, the Curtiss machine, that seemed bent on their own course, when, turning, he touched Dave sharply on the shoulder, and called loudly above the throb of the motor:
“There’s a heavy cloud-bank ahead.”
“I see that,” spoke the pilot of the Ariel.
“It ends in a mean fog, earthward.”
“Yes, I notice that, too. I tell you, Hiram, we are safer up here, under the circumstances, than trying to get down. We’ll nose up to a still higher altitude and get above the clouds.” ”

“ See, the ship has no wireless, and their lifeboat is gone. She can’t last long, Dave!”
Dave had turned the head of the Ariel straight back landwards. In a flash his assistant understood.
“Top speed for a rescue steamer, or the life-saving service,” announced Dave. His voice was slightly unsteady, for he realized the sacrifice he was about to make. “There’re women and children aboard that boat.”
“Yes, we’ve got to lose the race!” cried Hiram in disappointed tones.
“Better that than forget our humane duty,” responded the young pilot of the Ariel, but he said it with a sinking heart. ”

“ Brackett, at his side. “Dave will, I am sure.”
“Pretty work, that,” pronounced a bystander, and the staring, gaping Hiram echoed the sentiment enthusiastically.
The Whirlwind had been a mad, erratic, dashing creature full of strange turns and jerky movements. Valdec had looped the loop twice, but it was with a dive, rather than a swoop. The Ariel proceeded on its course with a gliding movement until about eight hundred feet up in the air. Then the pilot began a spiral. The crowd watched the maneuver breathlessly. ”

“ THE HIDDEN HAND “Hurray!” cheered Hiram Dobbs enthusiastically—“we’re off! Oh, Dave, this is life!”
“We are going to make this a record attempt, Hiram,” the young aviator advised his excited assistant. “Got the sealed barographs in place? All right. If we should really do something quite stunning, at the end of the flight we’ll submit results to the contesting committee of the governing organization at New York City.”
“A cross country flight as the crow flies!” cried Hiram. “It must be over three hundred and fifty miles. Dave, what do you expect?” ”

“ He scrambled to his feet breathless, but his eyes were fairly snapping from some intense excitement.
“Where’s your cap?” asked Hiram, noticing that his friend was bareheaded.
“Oh, that’s all safe,—and everything else!” cried Bruce, and he unbuttoned his coat and revealed his cap all wadded up. “Just look at that!” he shouted and he opened the cap. Within it rested a great heap of jewelry, blazing with crystal sparks of radiance.
“The diamonds!” gasped the astounded Hiram.
“I guess so!” answered Bruce. “The bargain with the jeweler was five thousand dollars’ reward. ”

“ To the expert young airman they were guiding. Dave set the machine on a swift drift then climbed up several hundred feet. Now the sparks, intermittent but perfectly distinct, were clearer and nearer the faster they went.
“It’s a machine,” soliloquized Dave, “and it must be the Scout. If it is—clever Hiram! He doesn’t dare show the lights, for that man aboard wouldn’t let him. I can guess what he has done—the vibrator.” ”

“ The long distance flight was on for the next day. It was the big event of the meet, with a large number of entrants, and nothing else much was talked of that evening or the following morning. “Biplane and one passenger,” ran the schedule and Hiram was glad of that.
“It’s a hundred and ten mile flight,” he remarked, “and the winner will come in under two hours.”
“Not with that choppy northwest wind,” reminded Dave. “There is one thing, though: the Ariel is made for all kinds of weather. It really gives the others a handicap.” ”

“ All he thought of was getting the Ariel outside the spreading circle of fire. He could choose no lanes between the numerous stacks, for the smoke now obscured everything. He had to trust to luck. Now he was running the machine along.
“The mischief!” uttered Hiram abruptly, and went spinning back half a dozen feet. He had driven the biplane squarely into an unseen stack. The rebound shook him loose. He stumbled and fell. ”

“ Hiram!” shouted Bruce three hours later, bursting into the hangar where his comrade was writing a letter to some home friends. “You’re to come down to headquarters right away.”
“That so? Who says it?” challenged Hiram in his usual offhand way.
“Mr. Brackett. And Dave. Something’s up. A row, I think.”
“A row? Why? what about?” questioned Hiram, fully interested now.
“About the awards. I don’t know—I just guess. I know this much, for Dave Dashaway told me that. The committee of awards wants all our people, and the Syndicate folks.” ”

“ Brackett, of whom I spoke to you yesterday, Lieutenant,” said Dave, introducing the manufacturer. “He might be interested to bear of the remarkable aviation progress in England.”
“Ah, just so, just so,” assented the lieutenant, with a searching look at Mr. Brackett. “Why, sir, I have told our young friend here of the flight-camps the British admiralty have established at Aldershot. I have been commissioned to secure some good tutoring material, and the fame of Dashaway naturally led me to him. It is example and direction that our novices need, and I can promise fine pay and a permanency. ”

“ Hiram is shrewd and intelligent. If he guesses for a moment that I am after him, soon as he gets his thinking cap on he will find some way to signal, or get the best of his passenger.”
“Don’t see anything,” observed the officer, and, big, brave fellow that he was, there was the tremor of the novice in air evident in his voice.
“They’ve got a start, you must remember,” explained Dave, “and a big field. We can only go on, keeping a sharp lookout. If you should happen to get sight of a black speck against the stars, tell me.” ”