CHAPTER XIV

CAPTAIN NAPIER’S NERVE IN MID-AIR SAVES THE CARGO

When Captain Ned, leaning backward over the lower gallery rail, gave the order to start, his eye caught sight of theHeraldburgee flying from the jack staff above. By deduction he guessed that theFlyer’sown flag was also displayed. In fact, both had been raised by Bob at the last moment. With a frown Ned had hurried to the top deck. To fly over New York Bay with these emblems prominently displayed in the breeze was a plain advertisement to any observer of the identity of the aeroplane and its connection with the paper. While the airship began to rise to a steadier flight Ned dropped each flag and, without waiting to furl or make them fast, sprang down the ladder again.

“We started two minutes and twenty-eight seconds late,” exclaimed Roy as Ned at last entered the pilot room. “To reach the tug we ought to do a mile in forty-four seconds.”

“Take it easy,” answered Ned. “If they are ready on time, a minute or two won’t make any difference. They can wait. How is she?” he went on in a more concerned voice, turning to Alan who was taking the first trick at the wheel.

“All right,” was the only response from the associate pilot, who did not even turn his head, and whose strained expression showed that his mind was on but one thing—the waiting tug and its valuable freight. This first stage of the overseas flight was too short and too low to call for either observation or compass reckoning and Roy, the observer, was standing at the open port door.

“I think you’ve got your eight hundred feet,” was his sudden, experienced comment.

Alan merely nodded his head, with a quick glance below, and then brought the airship slightly off the southeast breeze. There was a small dip to port, enough to make Ned and Roy “give” in their legs like old sailors on a pitching deck and the starboard door flew fully open. As the craft righted on a level keel again Ned explained:

“Take the lookout below, Osborne, and if we miss, pass the word to Alan at once by tube. I’ll attend to the crane.”

“If you don’t mind,” responded Roy, “I’d like to take charge of the pick-up, this time at least. Then, if it fails, it won’t be because the operator don’t understand it.”

“Get busy then,” responded Ned, granting the request with a wave of his hand. “When you’re ready let Stewart pass the word.”

As Roy slid down the ladder into the store room to open the engine room trap door and drop the metal crane into place, Ned stepped onto the port gallery at the bow of the car, from which station he had an unobstructed view below. Their objective point was in sight. Just before them rose the jagged sky line of New York’s skyscrapers. Where these ended on the south, the spidery arch of the big bridge sprang seaward to drop in the less distinct Brooklyn. In spite of the hot, sunny day, a haze seemed partly to obscure the bridge, their landmark, yet it was toward the center of this, dimly to be seen, that theFlyerwas now headed.

To Ned, Alan and Roy, the sensations that come with a flight at a high altitude were not new. But, to Buck and Bob—although the latter had made a few flights,—the experience was a thing to hasten their heartbeats. By this time the airship was gliding ahead on a level keel, its metal humming in the breeze. As Roy got the crane in place, working through the open trap door of the engine room, Buck got a direct view of the earth beneath. It was only salt marshes and winding waterwaysthat he saw but they were enough to show him that he was traveling far faster than any limited train had ever carried him.

“We’re a mile high and the ground’s flyin’ backward!” he gasped to Bob, who sat with his eyes fixed on the signal board, fuel and lubricator gauges.

“Get out on the gallery,” ordered Roy, “and give me more room—it’s crowded here. But stand by to bear a hand when I call you.”

As Buck edged to the cabin door and passed into the gallery, Roy dropped his crane and then threw himself on the floor to get an unobstructed view of the region below. Buck, clinging to the frame of the door, had another full view of the world spreading out beneath. Far in the west the Orange mountains rose in green and gray walls, over the tops of which heavy shadows told of unseen clouds and possible rain.

Cities and towns to the north and south, like pawns upon a giant chessboard, were known only by their clouds of smoke, the glimmer of metal roofs and squatty spires. There was no life and the silver estuaries of the sea, winding snakelike in the green of the salt marshes below, confused the eye. To the east the ribbon of the Hudson glistened in the sun while the great city beyond lost its dull browns and reds in the haze of smoke lying low in the almost breezeless June day.

As theFlyerincreased its speed, Buck pulled his cap lower. From where he stood on the engine room gallery, the port planes or wings, stretched horizontally over his head far from the body of the car. Swaying slightly beneath the pressure of flight, they sounded a constantly changing note of vibration. Beneath the forward plane the giant propeller caught and fixed his eye. He could no longer make out its blades but the heavy chain drive ran smoothly back and forth with all the fascination of an endless waterfall. Spell-bound, Buck held to the door frame and gazed until a sudden new lunge almost tore his grasp loose.

The sea was almost beneath. New York had risen in the air as if fresh new scenery had been pushed upon the stage. The big ocean steamers in dock at Hoboken and Jersey City lengthened from black lines to port pierced and big funnelled leviathans of the sea. Just to the north, round shaped ferry boats, drifting with the tide, were churning their way back and forth across the river. Then the great sky craft dropped once more. All the world seemed rising as if to meet the speeding aeroplane. Buck grasped the door and with the other hand caught the gallery rail.

“Stand by,” came a sharp command from within the cabin. Although holding to the ship with both hands in his new alarm, Buck had sense enough to realize this meant him. Scarcely knowing how he did it, the young reporter got into the engine room.

“Aye, aye,” he responded rather feebly. Just then theFlyertilted still further forward. It had reached New York harbor and its vigilant pilot was now preparing to pick up the waiting cargo. Buck saw the gently heaving tidewater as he took his post. Had either Roy or Bob looked at him they would have seen a sort of pallor creeping into his face. Bracing himself against the downward dip of the car Buck awaited further orders—his teeth set and his lips compressed as he fought his first attack of “sky sickness.”

“All right,” came suddenly through the speaking tube—the prearranged signal to Roy—and before Bob could repeat it he saw the speed indicator begin to drop. TheFlyerwas gliding toward the water and Roy’s head sank lower through the open space. On the upper forward gallery, Ned stood with a pair of binoculars in his hands. He had moved back opposite the open pilot room door. Ned made neither suggestion nor comment to his chum at the wheel. But, with a busy glass, he swept the opening of East River now dead ahead.

“See her?” called Ned when he first made out the “Fanny B.”

“In mid-river?” answered Alan.

“With a small black boat lying alongside,” continued Ned.

“Make out her two black-banded stacks?” asked Alan.

“And the signal too,” announced Ned. “She has a white flag at her stern.”

Alan made no reply, as these marks were not yet distinguishable by the naked eye. Yet he headed toward the craft in the middle of the river.

“I got her,” he exclaimed at last, giving the signal of caution through the tube at this time and beginning to decrease his speed. “She’s headin’ with us. Make out any one aboard?”

“Quite a bunch,” reported Ned without lowering his glasses. “Most of ’em on the roof of the engine house. There are two persons well aft standing by the hawser run in the stern.”

“Better come in and catch the time we pass the Battery,” suggested Alan and from that time he gave no more heed to his companion. Ned saw that the powerful ocean tug had already advanced some distance up the river. This made no difference in their plans so far as the catching of thecargo was concerned. But it did in another way, for their calculations for time and their latitude and longitude made the Battery their real starting point. In a moment he was at Alan’s side with the chronometer before him and his eyes looking through the port door.

Captain Ned knew that the tug was rising and falling just ahead and stern on. He had seen the black-hulledHeralddespatch boat veer off as if for a better view of what was to come. He thought he made out the figures of Major Honeywell and the managing editor standing apart in the stern. Then, like the painted panorama he had once seen of “Departure from New York harbor,” the old, round, familiar Battery in its little setting of green flashed into view.

“Two, twenty-one, seventeen,” exclaimed Ned and once more he disappeared through the starboard door. All was now so plain that Ned almost shrank back. As if shooting at a target, Alan held the airship directly on the rapidly expanding mark. One less familiar with the young aviator’s skill could have seen nothing but disaster ahead. In a constantly lowering curve theOcean Flyerseemed doomed to an inevitable collision.

There was a frightened scurrying on the tug. Those on the engine room roof were scrambling to the deck. The two men in the stern were waving their arms. But the cool-headed pilot had no eyes for these. Between two slender spars hung the rubber encased package of matrices that twenty-one minutes and seventeen seconds before, had come hot and steaming from the stereotyping room of theEvening Telegram. It was Alan’s business to pick up these paper forms and in seventeen hours carry them to the heart of London on the other side of the world.

The skill with which he laid his nerveless hand to this task meant the possibility of success or immediate disaster. To fail in his course by inches meant the wreck of all their cherished hopes and possibly the death of five persons. To Ned, on the gallery without, peering downward and crouching forward as rigid as bronze, the strain was no less. And yet, he remained silent. What one could do, two might not. Nothing of his own skill was missing in Alan. He rested his own fate, that of his companions and that of the great machine, in the hands of Alan and waited.

At the precise moment when the still rapidly moving airship seemed about to drop into the spray of the choppy waves—when, in fact, thelowered arm of Roy’s crane had already touched the water—there was a sudden movement for which only Ned and Roy were prepared. As Bob stumbled against the signal box and Buck’s weakened legs gave way beneath him, the propellers shot into high speed and the chug of the compressed air valves told that the big planes had been altered violently. There was only the hint of a check in the downward sweep of the aeroplane and as a din of cheers sounded ahead the birdlikeFlyersprang forward on a new course.

Alan, driving the ship, could not see at the moment of contact the object he was to pick up. Nor was Ned able to keep his eye on the waiting package. Roy alone of those on the aeroplane was in a position first to detect success or failure. From the instant the hurtling machine jumped on its upward course the tug and its masts disappeared from Alan’s sight. But all this was carefully calculated. It was easier to clear the tug’s masts with a lifting tail-piece than it was to avoid them on a downward swoop. But, more important, the checking of the swift flight for a moment put the aeroplane over the tug masts at a lessened speed.

There was no time to examine the persons on the tug. Like a moving picture, Alan and Ned caught a glimpse of the major and the newspaperman. The latter seemed to be calling, for his hands were at his mouth. But no words reached the aviators. A cloud of steam burst upward like the discharge from a gun and Alan’s last view of the boat beneath made out the face of the tug pilot as the man thrust his head from the small pilot house with one hand inside yet grasping the wheel. Ned saw these things but as he clung stoutly to the rail his eyes also swept the river ahead. For a second his thoughts left the question, “Would they pick up their valuable freight?” Before he could even realize a new fear that suddenly possessed him, there was a shock and theFlyerthrew its bow downward.

But the momentum of the machine and its altered planes acted as rudders. The dart seaward died almost instantly and the airship rose again on its upward course. With the shock had come a strain and then Roy saw the tug beneath him dip by the bow while the two masts bent forward under a heavy strain. The “pick up crane” had done its work but the spring hook on the starboard mast held until the strain of the pulling airship tore it loose. While it held, the powerful car veered to the right and then, as the hawser between the masts tore itself free, there was a new crash, a new shock and theFlyercleared the bobbing tug beneath.

PICKING UP THE MATRICES.

“The engine room!” rang out in the pilot room and Ned, balancing himself securely, sprang into that apartment. “The engine room!” cried Alan a second time. As he moved his head toward the hanging speaking tube, Ned understood and slid down the ladder into the store room. In the engine room he found Roy and Bob bending over the trap door opening. Near them, steadying himself against the wall of the compartment, was Buck—his face ashen and the picture of despair. Buck pointed feebly to the opening, almost blockaded by Roy and Bob.

“Jammed,” panted Roy, his face red with exertion, when he realized that Ned had arrived.

“She came back in the crane so hard,” explained Bob, breathing quickly, “that we can’t get the bundle loose.”

Ned threw himself on the floor and got a look below. The compact bundle of matrices, enclosed in waterproof oil cloth, had been caught by the crane and, as planned, had been shot up into the narrow V of the crane. But it had traveled with such speed that the metal arms of the V had sprung and were now closed on the bundle with a grip that the two boys could not loosen. While attempting to do so Roy had also been forced to maintain a hold on the cord holding the V pointof the crane up against the car opening. To loosen this meant that the crane would drop many feet below the bottom of the airship and that the valuable package might be dislodged and lost.

Without comment or inquiry Ned plunged into the store room and almost instantly reappeared with the light but strong rope landing ladder. The end loops of this he snapped into two rings on the engine room floor and while the passengers on the now fast receding tug on the river beneath could yet make out the details of the rapidly ascending airship, they saw what seemed to be a rope drop suddenly through the bottom of the aeroplane. Then they saw a figure crawling down the rope. It was Ned on the swaying rope ladder. When this nervy young man crawled through the door and risked his life on a few slender strands, it was to make fast a line on the wedged bundle. He could only work with one hand but he had done the same thing on a dirigible balloon and there was no nervousness to delay him.

“All fast,” he shouted after a few moments and Bob and Buck hauled away on the line. And they were just in time. Roy was nearly exhausted. As the new line took the strain off him and Roy straightened up to rest, the deep impress of the crane cord on his hand showed theweight he had been sustaining. But Ned’s work was not done. Still hanging to the fragile, swaying ladder, he tugged at the caught package until at last it began to move toward him.

“Stand by up there,” Ned yelled again. “All take a turn on the rope—she’s comin’.”

With another violent jerk the package came loose, slid forward on the crane and struck Ned’s legs. The hanging ladder flew forward while Ned caught himself with hands and legs and the bundle dropped free, swinging wildly back and forth. Twice, the human, swaying target was struck by the plunging package while Ned hooked his legs and arms desperately around the ladder, and then those in the engine room managed to draw the whirling parcel up to the trap door. Quick hands grasped and dragged it into the car.

The precious packet safe, Roy turned to assist Ned in mounting the ladder and re-entering the cabin. One glance and a frightened cry came from him. There was no one on the rope ladder. Ned had disappeared.

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