CHAPTER XII
HOW THE FLIGHT WAS TO BE MADE
HOW THE FLIGHT WAS TO BE MADE
HOW THE FLIGHT WAS TO BE MADE
When Sunday came, Alan, Bob and Buck were glad enough to ease up on their work. Supplies to be used on the flight were now accumulating in a corner of the setting-up room. All the boys took luncheon with President Atkinson this day. In the early afternoon the manager of theHeraldgot Alan on the telephone and a long talk followed. At its close Alan announced a surprising development.
“The editor,” Alan explained, “has a new proposition. I didn’t agree with him because I want to talk it over with Ned. I’ll wire him at Pittsburgh this evening and in the morning I’ll board his train and go on into the city with him. If it comes to anything you fellows will be interested.”
“And we’ve got to wait till to-morrow to know?” asked Bob.
“He wants to get up the story of theFlyerand what it’s goin’ to do, and spring it the night we get back.”
“Mystory?” asked Buck. “The one that wasn’t printed?”
“Therealstory,” added Alan nodding his head, “for I reckon you’d get a different angle on it now.”
“You’re talkin’ now,” sighed Buck. “My, but I’d like to have another chance at it.”
“TheHeraldmay give you all the chance you want,” went on Alan, “if we agree to the plan.”
“Spit it out,” broke in Bob, his eyes dilated.
“Well, the idea is this. Neither theHeraldnor Ned and I want to do any talkin’ if this thing ain’t a go. If we stick our nose in the Jersey marshes or drop into the Sound we’ll let the other fellows guess at what we were tryin’ to do. But as theHeraldsuggests, if we reach London and get back, there isn’t any reason why the story shouldn’t be told and told right. The editor wants to get up a full account of theFlyer, its motive power, pictures of it, the program of its proposed voyage, the route and a sketch of its ‘brilliant’ crew, and have it all ready to print the moment we return.”
“But what if we don’t quite do it?” broke in Buck.
“There won’t be any story to print,” laughed Alan.
“How areweinterested, specially?” asked Bob, pointing to young Stewart and himself.
“You’ll have to write the story, that’s all,” answered Alan. “Who else could?”
The young Kentuckian sprang to his feet.
“I told you I’d stick around,” he cried. “I told you something would turn up.”
“Say,” added Bob skeptically, “don’t get excited. I’ve been on the point of almost puttin’ over a story about those wise young fellows a good many times. But don’t you count on ’em. Don’t forget they haven’t consented yet. I’m not goin’ to believe there’s any job like that comin’ to me till it gets here.”
“The way things look now,” continued Alan, laughing, “I think I’m in favor of the idea. If Ned is, it’ll probably go through.”
Neither of the reporters waited for formal orders. During the afternoon they persuaded Alan to have the giant aeroplane hauled out into the deserted factory yard, and Bob photographed it from every angle, getting views in general and in detail. Alan was also pictured in a half-Arctic costume. That evening, borrowing typewriters from Mr. Atkinson’s business office, Bob and Buck began writing a story that they hoped would be wanted.
“I know the machine, now,” suggested Buck. “I thought I did once before but now I do. I’ll tell about it; how it was made and all about their nightly experiments. You tell about the trip, how it’s to be made and how the thing is to be navigated. And don’t forget to get in an account of the Airship Boys.”
Not being under the pressure of a press hour, neither reporter finished his work that night. In the morning their duties in the setting-up shed called them to the plant. But at noon, when Alan told them over the telephone that the new plan had been approved and that they were to report at theHeraldoffice at once, they were off on the first train, their pockets stuffed with manuscript and camera films. Ned and Alan left for Newark on the three o’clock train with the engineer’s completed sailing charts and at eight Buck and Bob had completed almost nine columns of the big story.
This work was not done in the big local and telegraph room of the paper but in an adjoining editorial office. It was in charge of Mr. Latimer, the night city editor of theHerald, who for four days, representing both theHeraldandTelegram, had been preparing for the great event. He toldBuck and Bob of the special edition which contained features of all kinds that might interest Englishmen or represent the good wishes of Americans from Canada to the West Indies.
The engineer’s final report on the direct or “as a bird flies” route between New York and London was complete in all details. To Alan, a mathematician and calculator himself, it appealed as a fine picture interests an art connoisseur. Although the company expert gave the initial direction from the Battery (magnetic course N. 67° E, and the compass point as E. N. E.), and the names of the larger towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts over or near which a direct line to Ipswich, Massachusetts, would take the aerial navigators, he left this portion of the line of travel to be worked out for land marks and other details by the boys themselves.
For the use of the pilot he had furnished full directions covering the trip between Ipswich and Fogo Island, off the east coast of Newfoundland, and for the ocean voyage proper, a North Atlantic Pilot Chart plotted on rhumb lines, and a table of true and magnetic courses with latitude and longitude indicated. The directions and table were carefully printed that they might hang in front of the pilot. The chart was mounted so that the observer could check off the advances.
As soon as Newark was reached the two boys provided themselves with large scale maps of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ireland and England. Late that evening when the elated journalists reached the hotel, Ned and Alan were yet busy with rule and dividers locating land points, towns, railroads, rivers, hills and lakes. The data on the water voyage and the big northward bend of the charted ocean route instantly mystified Buck.
“Do you mean to tell me,” began the astounded Bob, “that when we start for London we’re goin’ to begin by crossing over Connecticut?”
“Forty miles up the sound,” explained Ned.
“Why don’t we go right at it and hit the water?” added Buck. “What’s the use of losing time to make that big curve? Want to keep over the land as long as you can?”
“Say,” laughed Alan, “you fellows didn’t happen to try to tell anything about our course in your story, did you?”
“Certainly,” answered Buck, “I said we’d sail east as the crow flies.”
“Well,” responded Alan, “we’ll never sail exactly east. Do you know what a great circle course is?”
The good natured Buck blushed and shook his head.
“It’s an imaginary line that shows the shortest distance between two parts of the world and it’s curved because the maps we generally use represent the curve of the globe and a straight line on these wouldn’t show the shortest distance,” volunteered Bob promptly and proudly. “But I didn’t know it ran over Connecticut.”
“Correct,” exclaimed Alan.
“But what’s all these figures?” went on Buck.
“They’re to keep us on our course. You’ll find the same charts in the navigating room of every liner. With these and our compass we hope to cross the Atlantic without attempting an astronomical observation for our bearings.”
“But out here on the Atlantic you’ve got a path laid down in ink. And between Ipswich and where you leave Newfoundland you haven’t any path!” continued the inquisitive Buck.
“For this reason,” explained Ned. Then, pausing, he continued, “Bob, you ought to understand this. You were with us in Bering Straits and Beaufort Sea. You tell him why.”
“Pie,” grunted Bob. “Maybe you think I don’t know. On short legs,” and he winked, proud of his nautical record, “where there isn’t much variation in the compass—”
“You know,” volunteered Alan, “that you can’t pick out a compass direction and stick to it for a long voyage. You’ve got to allow for the lessening tendency in the compass needle to point directly toward the magnetic pole.”
“I’d have got to that in a second,” protested Bob. “Well, where the distances are not great and you have land marks or lighthouses or buoys to bring you up if you go wrong, sailors generally set a course by compass and allow nothing for the variation of the needle. They may shy off a few miles but a headland or a known lighthouse will bring ’em right again. But, on the high seas, it’s a different story. When they begin a voyage a course is laid to an imaginary point—say three hundred miles out. You can pretty nearly tell when you’ve covered this on a steamer by the speed of the engines. On a sailing vessel it’s often necessary to find the point with an observation for longitude and latitude. When that point is reached, the course is altered and a new point taken. The direction of this is marked down by compass. That’s called the ‘true course.’ Then, knowing your latitude and longitude, you’ve got to calculate what the magnetic variation will be in that place and from that you get what’s called a ‘magnetic course.’ That’s the one you sail. And you do this over and over till you get there.”
Poor Buck shook his head, not much better off than before. Ned picked up the engineer’s table of courses for the ocean flight.
“Look here,” he began, pointing to the chart. “Let me try. See Fogo Island up here—where we leave Newfoundland?” Buck wrinkled his forehead and looked. “Well, the bearing of that is known—it’s 54° and 5´ west longitude and 49° 43´ north latitude. Our course from that looks like a curve but the curve is really made up of short straight lines. We make our first straight line end at a convenient place on our curve. The first one stops at 50° west longitude and 54° 40´ north latitude. For a navigator it is now a question in mathematics to find the true direction between these two bearings. In this instance you’d reach the end of the first straight line by sailing N. 67° E., from Fogo Island. That is, you would if it were not for the variation in the compass due to the magnetic pole. In this latitude and longitude the variation would be 33-1/2° W. Then it’s a question of more mathematics and your true course of N. 67° E., becomes a magnetic course of S. 79-1/2° E., or, by compass, E. by S.”
“I ain’t goin’ to be called on to do that figurin’, am I?” asked the alarmed Buck.
“It’s all done,” laughed Ned, “thanks to our engineer.”
“Well, or try to understand it?” persisted Buck. “For I might as well let you in on a secret: I don’t understand a bit of it. If you can start goin’ N. 67° E., and then go the same way by runnin’ S. 79° E., you’ve got my goat.”
“Oh, you’re not so much wiser,” exclaimed Alan when Ned and Bob laughed at Buck’s perplexity and frankness. “Neither of you could make one of these calculations.”
“Right,” retorted Ned, “but you watch me use ’em.”
Bob had been studying the Ipswich-Fogo courses and data.
“I think I could almost do this part of the trip myself. It’s pretty plain sailin’.”
Ned took up this section of instructions and produced a map of the Gulf of Maine and the Nova Scotia peninsula. A straight line had been drawn on it from Ipswich harbor to Fogo Island.
“We can start from Ipswich almost any old way, so long as it’s seaward,” he began with another laugh. “But, when we pick up the two lighthouses on Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann they ought to lie ten miles abeam to the south.”
“What’s abeam?” asked Buck innocently.
“Anything at right angles with the deck,” explained Bob learnedly. “That means when a vessel is nearest to an object it’s passing. In other words, when you don’t see it forward—I mean for’ard—or astern.”
“At that point,” continued Ned, “we simply bring our vessel on a plain compass course of E. N. E., and buckle down to it. If it were night, when a little later we passed a red and white flash light eight miles abeam to the north—”
“Nor’ard,” corrected Bob.
“To the nor’ard,” repeated Ned, “we’d know exactly where we were—fifteen miles from Thatcher’s Island and off the Isle of Shoals. And so it goes across the Bay. Ninety miles farther, or a half hour’s flight, ought to put Montigan Light twelve miles abeam north of us, if we are on our course. Then it’s 105 miles to Matinicus with its two fixed white lights.”
“Oh, I see,” commented Buck with a chuckle. “You’ve got a mile post every hundred miles or so.”
“Every half hour or so,” replied Ned significantly.
“And a height from which we can see fifty or sixty miles in a pinch,” added Alan.
“Thatmaymake a difference,” acknowledged the reporter.
“Then, something comes every few miles,” went on Ned, “points abeam, north or south, but always in sight; thirty-two miles to Mt. Desert rock, Great Duck alongside; seventeen miles to Petite Manan, sixteen miles to Moosabec, nine miles to Libby, seven miles to Machias Seal Islands, nine miles to Cutter’s Harbor and then twenty miles to the east end of Grand Manan, a big island. At Matinicus we change our course from E. N. E. to E. N. E. 1/4 E., and when we pass the fog horn on Long Eddy Point at the east end of Grand Manan, we change again to E. by N.”
“When do we get there?” asked Buck soberly.
“That’s about five hundred and fifty miles from New York,” replied Ned in the same tone. “Allowing a safe margin, if we leave New York on schedule, at two twenty P. M., we ought to lay Eddy Point abeam before six o’clock or better.”
“What’s the good o’ all the lighthouses in the daytime?” commented the reporter.
“A lighthouse usually stands up in the air,” Bob put in, “and in many cases, they’re white. Besides, and you may as well keep this in mind, we’ll be returning that way the next evening sometime about nine o’clock when the lights are working.”
“Very good,” responded Buck. “I understand that at least.”
“Got enough?” asked Ned, yawning and looking at his watch, which marked after midnight.
“Go on,” exclaimed Buck with alacrity. “Acquiring information is my long suit. When do we get to Nova Scotia, the ‘Land of the Blue Noses’?”
“From that on,” answered Ned, “we’ll follow its shore, for we’ll be over the north branch of the Bay of Fundy where the tides come from—the ‘fog factory.’ On our north, we’ll pass the city of St. Johns, New Brunswick, forty-five miles farther east, and then for seventy-five miles the rocks and trees of New Brunswick will be almost beneath us. At the town of Amherst, where the Bay of Fundy ends, theFlyerwill have fifteen miles of Nova Scotia to cross.”
“We ought to have supplies there,” broke in Alan.
“No stop scheduled,” commented Ned tartly. “On the east side of the peninsula of Nova Scotia we’ll strike Northumberland Straits at Cold Spring Harbor. At Amherst we alter our course again to E. 1/2 N. Northumberland Straits are twenty-five miles wide. Then it’s Prince Edward Island, which we cross. That puts us over the Gulf of St. Lawrence with a one hundred and sixty-five mile glide to Cape Anguille on the westside of Newfoundland. There’s a light on Anguille Point. A last run of two hundred and forty miles across Newfoundland brings us to Fogo and the real start. Then it’s ‘ho for Galway Bay’ in Ireland and London Town.”
“It says we change our course to E. 1/4 S. at Anguille,” added Alan, who was following the directions.
“That ought to make it easy,” remarked Buck with one of his grins. “Do we stop at Fogo?”
“Not so you could notice it,” said Ned with a snap. “Good night.”