CHAPTER III
THE VETERAN TAKES OFF HIS HAT TO THE CUB
THE VETERAN TAKES OFF HIS HAT TO THE CUB
THE VETERAN TAKES OFF HIS HAT TO THE CUB
The rest of reporter Stewart’s story of the mysterious airship flight, together with his elaborate account of the construction of the aeroplane as it had been described to him, ran much over a column. Old Dick, the copy reader, groaned and even Mr. Latimer began to wonder how he was to get his “beat” into two columns without “killing” Chamber’s “talk” with Colonel Grant, Winton’s account of the Airship Boys or Glidden’s “lead.”
The latter Mr. Latimer had already thrown out conditionally but he was determined to use the interview and the account of the earlier adventures of the daring boys. There could be only one solution of the difficulty: he must have more space if he had to choke it out of the night editor. Meanwhile, he began to put some pressure on the wordy reporter.
“It’s good stuff, old man,” he said to the perspiring reporter as the latter pounded his typewriter, “but you know this isn’t a magazine and other things have happened to-night.”
Stewart was only a beginner. As yet he knew only a part of a reporter’s trade. He could write but he hadn’t learned how to tell it in a “stick.” The editorial admonition fell on him with little effect. He seemed unable to omit any detail. Page after page came from his machine to tell how for twenty-five minutes the four or five men in the Aeroplane Company yards waited for the return of the flying car.
He told how a movable searchlight was stationed at the landing place and how the watchers then betook themselves to the wireless office of the works. With good judgment he refrained from telling how he concealed himself just without an open window, and one reading his narrative might conclude that the prying reporter was a guest of the watchful group.
Some of the messages from the moving aeroplane he heard and of these he told. Most of them he missed, as his vantage point was somewhat removed. He could tell that the busy wireless operator was in almost constant communication with “Bob” on the airship. But the most important message he did hear, because when it came the excited operator repeated it as if reading a bulletin to anxious thousands.
“On board Ocean Flyer,” he read, “10.24 P. M. Estimate forty miles from Newark at sea. Big steamer beneath. Turning. Better time returning. Look out. Bob Russell.”
It required but a moment’s calculation when he heard this to make Stewart gasp with amazement. At that rate theOcean Flyerwas doing one hundred and eighty miles an hour. Not even this speed had been predicted by his talkative fellow workman. And at this rate he knew that the marvelous airship might be expected in the Aeroplane Company yards again by ten forty-five o’clock.
The reporter made his plans at once. He knew that it was both futile and inadvisable, if he was to attempt to score his news “beat,” to wait in an attempt to interview either the Airship Boys on the aeroplane or to get more exact particulars from the Aeroplane Company officials. Therefore, making his way out of the yards, he hurried along switch tracks until he was in the vicinity of the street car terminal.
With watch in hand, he waited in the suburban stillness and gloom while he searched the eastern sky. He knew theOcean Flyercarried no outside signal yet he hoped for a possible glimpse of the shaded green pilot or engine room light. More than once he fancied he could hear the peculiar low note of the big craft’s engines. Andall the time he kept an eye on the vertical shaft of the searchlight at the works, for by this beacon he knew the returning craft must guide itself to a safe landing. But neither sound nor returning light could he detect. When it was exactly a quarter of eleven o’clock he began to regret his attempt to save time and was debating the advisability of returning to the plant. In doubt, he was aware suddenly of a new note in the hum of the mosquitoes and other marsh things about him. Was it mosquitoes or was it the hum of the unseen airship? The sound ceased suddenly. Almost immediately the shaft of the warning searchlight swept earthward and disappeared.
Instinctively the nervous reporter glanced at his watch. It was a few seconds of ten forty-six. A trolley car was just starting. With a gulp of exultation the happy Stewart dashed forward and flipped the car. He knew that theOcean Flyerhad made a successful flight and had safely returned. He knew also the distance it had traveled and the time it had taken to do it. His only object was now to call his office by telephone and deliver the story. All these details his rapidly written copy told later, omitting the personal part. When it was complete a column of matter was on Mr. Latimer’s desk.
As Stewart noticed the number of his last page and realized how much he had written, he paused aghast. The bigger part of his story was yet to come—all the details of the ingenious creation remained to be written. Frightened by his failure to obey orders he hastened to Mr. Latimer’s desk. Here, three tired and nervous men, with the marks of a night’s grinding work on their faces and linen—unlit pipes or half consumed, fireless cigars gripped in their set teeth—were gathered in sullen debate.
“There’s two columns of it now and more to come,” the night editor was saying decisively. “We can’t give you another inch.”
Mr. Latimer saw Stewart approaching.
“How much more of that story is there?” he asked appealingly.
“A column, I think.”
The night city editor sighed and the telegraph editor laughed sarcastically.
“Any one who can see three columns in an airship story to-day must have forgotten they’re already back numbers,” exclaimed this executive.
“Lift a column of cable rot,” suggested the night city editor. “This can’t be cut; it’s a big story and it’s a ‘beat’.”
“Give him the paper,” went on the telegraph editor wearily.
“You’ll have to get along with two columns,” answered the night editor, “unless you think the paper is elastic or that we ought to have another page.”
Mr. Latimer slapped the desk with the last “take” of Stewart’s copy.
“You fellows don’t know news when you see it. What does the average reader care about English elections and French champagne riots? Every man and boy in the United States is interested in aeroplanes. And this story tells about the final thing in airships. It’ll be read all over the world to-morrow. It’s big, I tell you, and worth a page—”
“That’s what they all say,” sneered the telegraph editor.
“And I’m goin’ to print it all—every word of it—if I have to take it up to the old man himself.”
“That’s your cue,” broke in the night editor as he excitedly attempted to relight his dead cigar. “That’s where you’ll have to go. You don’t get but two columns from me.”
“It’s twenty minutes after one o’clock,” remarked a sour voice from the near-by copy reader’s desk. “If there’s any more of that Newark stuff you’d better hump it along.”
Without replying, the night city editor tossed old Dick the last of Stewart’s story describing the departure and return of the Airship Boys’ newest wonder and then arose with fire in his eyes.
“Give me all you can write up to two fifteen,” he snapped to Stewart, “and—” Just then his telephone rang.
“Yes,” he answered in a tired voice while the telegraph and night editors yet lingered by his desk. “Nathan? You seem to have taken plenty of time for your supper. Well? Oh, they did. All right. You don’t know where they are stopping? Good-bye.” Then he arose and glared once more at his nightly enemies—the telegraph and night editors. “Winton,” he called sharply to that reporter, who was sitting near by with his feet on a table. “These Airship Boys left Newark on the express just after Stewart. Nathan says they’re in town. Take a flyer through the hotels. Land ’em if possible. Make ’em talk. Phone me if you locate them.”
“’S that mean more of this flyin’ machine stuff?” grunted the head copy reader.
“It means I’m attending to my own business,” retorted Mr. Latimer, and with no further word or look for his office associates, he walked hurriedly toward the door. As the sailor “goes tothe mast” or to the captain of the ship in a last appeal against unfairness or injustice, Mr. Latimer was on his way to the “old man” or the managing editor on his customary protest against the machinations of the night editor. Stewart hastened to his typewriter and resumed his tale of the aeroplane.
“The problem of how to build an aeroplane large enough to carry passengers hundreds of miles—possibly across the Atlantic—and at the same time develop speed enough to hold its own against storms, seemed unsolvable until two discoveries were made last winter. Both of these are now well known to scientists and both are unknown as yet to the layman. It was the almost simultaneous discovery of the new metal magnalium (due to the development of the electric converter by the steel works in Chicago) and a final determination of the law of the propeller by Professor Montgomery of California.
“With this new magnalium it is at last possible to make an all-metal car with light but rigid wings or planes. This metal, a magnesium alloy with copper and standard vanadium or chrome steel, at once assumed a new place in metals.” (These facts Stewart had secured from a German metallurgical quarterly in the Newark Public Library.)“Magnalium is not only extremely light but it has a molecular cohesion never before attained. Its peculiar toughness gives it a capacity for being worked slowly that is ideal for aeroplane uses. It turns the edge of the hardest chisel driven against it, yet the same drill, under slow pressure, will cleave it almost as easily as aluminum.”
Marking this much of his new story “more,” to indicate to the copy readers that more was to come, and heading his next page “Add 1 Description Aeroplane,” Stewart rushed the prepared “take” of copy to the city editor’s desk and continued:
“It is from this new metal that the car, planes and truss of theOcean Flyerare constructed. The aeroplane is modeled in general after the body and wings of a gull in full flight, insuring, by its peculiar construction, not only the greatest speed, but, by an ingenious adaptation of the same gull’s wing, the automatic stability long striven for by aeroplane builders.”
IN THE “LOCAL ROOM” OF THE NEW YORK HERALD.
IN THE “LOCAL ROOM” OF THE NEW YORK HERALD.
IN THE “LOCAL ROOM” OF THE NEW YORK HERALD.
“Three sets of follow or tandem planes project, with slight dihedral angles, for from eighty to forty feet on each side of the body of the craft, a wing width never before attained. Yet, in flight, the enormous craft is readily held aloft, with all its load, by wings that are no more than seven and one-half feet in chord—from front to trailing edge. Although it will be incomprehensible to many how such small lifting surface can elevate such a heavy structure, this becomes apparent when the airship is seen at rest. The moment the air pressure due to rapid flight is lessened to a certain point by descent or cessation of motion, the narrow wing surfaces automatically spread till they are twenty-one feet from front to back.”
Glidden, the only airship man in the office, who covered all the aviation “stunts,” had long since finished his interview and was now lounging on the desk next to Stewart’s.
“Great!” was his comment, as he read this part of the story page by page. “Some one is strong with the Jules Verne stuff. Go to it, kid.”
The busy Stewart scarcely heard him.
“This was accomplished,” went on the young reporter, shouting for a copy boy and hustling to the desk another section of the story that was destined never to be printed, “in a simple manner. Near the leading edge of each wing is installed one of the new German pressure gauges with small openings just under the dipping edge. These small appliances, of compact construction,are easily concealed in the depth of the wing. Ordinarily these powerful gauges operate a needle to record pressure. Those used on the planes of theOcean Flyerare made on a heavier scale and operate directly on a spring drum. From these, light cables extend to movable sections of the wings.
“These movable sections of the planes, the first unique feature of the new airship, telescope within and without the standard sections of the wings. By means of the gauge and spring drums they are extended automatically when the machine is not in swift flight. When the craft has made an ascent and attained a speed sufficient to create a vacuum under the dipping or front edge of the planes, the suction or reverse pressure on the gauges allows the drums to reel in the extension surfaces. When in full motion, as these come in, speed is naturally increased and all the extensions are housed securely beneath or over the main section of the wing.”
“How about the wing trusses?” broke in the skeptical Glidden.
“Corrugated rigidity,” replied Stewart promptly, remembering the phrase he had heard applied to the long, untrussed wings.
“The first section or extension,” his story continued, “running in its grooves, so closely overlaps the outside of the main section as to appear to be its proper covering. The rear section, with separate leaves, like the feathers of a bird’s wing, likewise disappears, leaving only the long narrow wing which has always been the ideal speed machine.
“To drive this huge craft, whose body consists of two stories or decks with pilot house, staterooms, fuel chambers, engine room, bridges above and protective galleries, a much higher percentage of motor power than ever secured before had to be turned into propulsive energy. The waste, or ‘slip’ of the ordinary propellers not only allowed a great deal of the motor’s power to escape, but it applied the remaining power so far from the shaft of the propeller that the resultant leverage greatly reduced the actual thrust.” (As Stewart finished this sentence, after several pauses and corrections, he turned the page over to Glidden with some pride. Then he paused while the older reporter read it.)
“Is that right?” asked Stewart with a curious smile.
“Absolutely,” answered Glidden. “What’s next?”
Stewart’s typewriter began clicking again.
“The new French ‘moon propeller’ does away with this ‘slip’ and allows the full power of the engine to be applied advantageously. Viewed sidewise this new form of propeller looks exactly like the new moon, its tips bending ahead of its shaft attachment. Its object is to gather the air at the outside of the circle,—”
“Periphery,” suggested Glidden, who was reading over the writer’s shoulder. Stewart made the change and continued: “compress it in accelerating degrees as it is forced toward the shaft and there, at the broad, ugly-looking middle section of the blade, exert the full force of the motor on the compressed air. The result is to increase the efficiency of the engine by two hundred and fifty per cent. The massive, eleven-foot propellers, with a section five feet broad at the center, give opportunity for the application of this great force.”
“How about the engine?” exclaimed Glidden as this paragraph was finished. His smile of skepticism was not as marked now.
“This force,” continued the younger man, “is secured by a chemical engine in which dehydrated sulphuric ether and gasoline or either may be used. Since the experiments with sulphuric ether, made last fall, engine makers have watchedthe rapid development of this form of engine with the greatest interest. Magnalium cylinders, sustaining the shock of the tremendous explosions as the cylinders revolve past the exploding chamber, have developed a power previously only dreamed of. Each of the two huge engines used on theOcean Flyeris six feet in diameter with four explosion chambers cooled by fans which feed liquid ammonia to the cylinder walls in a spray and then furnish power for its liquefaction again. In form, each engine is a great wheel or turbine on the rim of which is a succession of conical pockets or cylinders. These are presented to the explosion chambers, receive the impact of the explosion and then, running through an expanding groove, allow the charge to continue expanding and applying power till the groove ends in an open slot which instantly cleanses the cylinders or pockets of the burnt gases. By this arrangement there is only a twentieth part of the engine wheel where no power is being imparted, thus giving practically a continuous torque.”
“How’s ‘torque’?” laughed Stewart as he inserted a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter.
“Torque,” responded Glidden without even a smile, “is exceedingly good. As to the rest of your mechanical details all I can say is I take off my hat to you and whoever handed you this. It is exceedingly warm.”
“The joke of it all,” commented the other reporter, who was not without his own sense of humor, “is that these absurdities all happen to be practicalities. There’s a little more.”
“Weighing 520 pounds each,” continued Stewart, “and with a speed of 1,500 revolutions a minute, these big turbines generate 972 horsepower, natural brake test, and this may be raised to above a thousand horsepower without danger. Revolving in opposite directions they do away with dangerous gyroscopic action. Power is applied to the propellers by magnalium gearing. These are geared up, instead of down, as has always been the practice, and the new ‘moon propellers’ gain in thrust with high speed instead of losing it. This is because of greater compression of the air and a vacuum set up ahead of the blades by reason of their high speed. The car itself—”
At this moment—now after two o’clock—Mr. Latimer suddenly appeared at Stewart’s side.
“Needn’t write any more,” he said sharply. “The story isn’t going to be printed. The managing editor wants to see you at once.”