CHAPTER VA STOWAWAY
Day whirled after day, filled with pleasant labor. Each morning the Moonbeam was sent up for a flight which sometimes occupied but a few hours, and sometimes stretched into the night. At first there were many little things to do for her; adjustments, changes, the tightening of a screw here, the tuning up of a brace there. Men watched the propeller shafts, and listened to the smooth roar of the engines in their throbbing “eggs.”
Captain Fraine, with his navigators at his side, tried for altitude and depth; nosed up, swept down, turned the ship in majestic circles. She responded perfectly. Her bulk, so much greater than that of any previous dirigible, seemed to have no effect in the action of her great engines, and she answered the wheel with absolute ease.
At mess one night Red strolled over to David’s table with a letter. “From Padre Ryan,” he said.
David took the sheet. It was brief.
Dear Swan:
Your night letter enchants me. I rejoice that you’ve such a big chance before you. And if you don’t uphold the honor of the family I’ll lay the curse of Saint Morvin on you. He’s little known, but most efficacious.
I’ll pray for you. As a child you had a bad way of leaning out of upstairs windows. Have the ship screened.
Your devoted and loving brother,John.
Your devoted and loving brother,John.
David laughed. “He must be a card, all right.”
“Well, he’s not so bad,” said Red. “A kindly priest, and a good son to his mother. David, I’m all set for the take-off.”
So was David. On the morning of the fifteenth, he was the first man at the hangar, and it was his hand that pressed the lever, putting in motion the mechanism that slid back the great doors.
It was not yet dawn, but a vast mob packed the field. For months the building of the great dirigible had been followed, detail by detail, by an interested public. Her plans, charts and dimensions had appeared in all the leading newspapers and magazines, accompanied by long articles.
Finally came the news of her completion. The announcement of the round-the-world flight as her maiden effort was the spark which caused the enthusiasm of the public to burst into flame. A year ago they had watched the detailed accounts of the Graf Zeppelin, as radiograms marked her flight.
Now a ship of their own; an American ship financed with American money and manned, from the commander down, with Americans, was to essay the same journey, hoping to better the time of the Graf Zeppelin. The papers devoted pages to the anticipated adventure. Radiograms, cables, letters of congratulation and good wishes, invitations from half the countries of Europe asking Mr. Hammond to detour in their several directions and stop off, were printed for the pleasure of a public which felt a proprietary interest in the Moonbeam.
All night the field had been black with people. With fine democracy they slept in their trucks, their flivvers, or their Packards, and at intervals ate hot dogs and sandwiches. Hundreds of soldiers labored to keep the field about the hangar clear for the departure of the outgoing ship. And still they came. The first trolleys were packed with frantic hordes that pushed and jostled to get near the ropes that had been stretched along for hundreds of yards, and through which people continually broke.
At last, as the crews walked the great gleaming shape out onto the field, a deafening cheer broke like a portentous wave. Hoarse voices cried, “Good luck, Moonbeam! Good luck!—’ray! ’ray! ’ray!—Go in and win, Moonbeam! Beat the Zep! Beat the Zep!”
When Mr. Hammond’s car drove up, Dulcie hopped gaily out, her little Pekinese hugged under her arm.
“Isn’t this jam perfectly terrific?” she said to Captain Fraine. “We could scarcely get through.”
“Most of them have been here all night,” said Captain Fraine. “They’re certainly enthusiastic. These troops the Governor sent down have had a lively time keeping them off the field.”
“Any of the passengers here yet?” asked Dulcie.
“Most of them, although it’s early yet. They seem afraid the boat will start without them!”
“I’m going on board,” said Dulcie. “I want to put dad’s bicarbonate where he will see it. He always loses it, poor dear, whenever he gets indigestion.”
“Plenty of time, Miss Hammond,” said Fraine, as he escorted her to the steps leading up to the passenger gondola. “I wish you were going with us.”
“So do I!” sighed Dulcie.
She went into her father’s cabin, and arranged several small bottles and boxes on a shelf. Her father came in.
“Wish I dared take you with me, honey,” he said wistfully. “But I can’t risk you, can I? If anything should happen—”
“It’s just as you say, daddy. I’ve teased all I have the face to. But please don’t wave at me when you start. I might bust right out and cry. So I’ll run right off and get lost in the crowd.”
“You behave yourself while I’m gone, Dulcie, and no running around with that young bounder of a Greene chap back home.”
“I won’t speak to him while you are away,” Dulcie promised. “And I will behave all the time exactly as though you had your eye on me.”
She kissed him lightly, and was gone, leaving him with a feeling of loneliness and loss that overshadowed the pleasure of the take-off.
The engines were adding a deep roar to the human sounds. People strained against those in front, and pushed them into the ropes. Small dogs dodged into the open space and barked. The crew swarmed up and took their places in the ship, with excitement written large all over them. Two of the reporters paused for last-minute shots. Movie cameramen, thanking their stars for the bright sun that had appeared, ground frantically. Automobiles began to toot their horns as at length, the last man on board, the ground crew of five hundred men walked toward the ship from the spread-fan positions they had been holding. The twenty thousand spectators let out a mighty roar; a sea of upturned faces watched as the Moonbeam rose slowly, her motors drowning the noise of the crowd.
From a window Mr. Hammond searched through his glasses for a familiar little figure. “I thought the kid would wave me off, after all,” he said to himself. “Wish now I had brought her along. At least I would know where she was.”
“Couldn’t have had a better take-off, commander,” said Captain Fraine, at his side. “Her engines simply sing.”
“Glad you are pleased, captain,” answered Mr. Hammond. “We’ll soon see how she performs. We are out to make a record, as you know, and that means a steady, day-after-day excellence. From Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen is approximately forty-two hundred miles. We have got to make up some of our time on that leg of the trip. I don’t know Russia at all; in fact, I am a little dubious about it, although Dr. Eckener experienced no trouble whatever.”
“Why didn’t you bring your daughter along, commander?” asked Captain Fraine. “The Graf Zeppelin had a woman passenger.”
“I know, I know! I suppose I am just fussy over the kid. I wanted her where I knew she would be safe. She’s going to the seashore. Hope she won’t swim out too far.”
“Does she drive her own car?” asked Fraine, hiding a grin.
“Lord, yes, drives like the very devil.” He turned his back, and looked down. The crowds were far away. “Buck up, buck up, you old fool!” he told himself savagely. “She’s all right—but I’ll bring her along next time.”
The sunlight was glorious; glittering and flashing, the ship circled above Ayre, returned to her own field, and dipped low in a graceful gesture of farewell, while the waiting crowds went mad. Rising, she sped eastward toward Lakehurst, her first stop. Under her flowed the lovely panorama of Ohio; gently rolling woodland, wide and opulent farms with dark patches of plowed lands and the lush green of springing crops. Towns appeared here and there, little huddles of houses at crossroads, and large cities, where the smoke of manufactories spiraled lazily upwards, as though pointing indolently at the passing ship.
David went into the chart room, and found Red poring over the passenger list.
“I see we’ve got a medico with us,” he said.
“Yes, Dr. Forsythe; of course the Company would send their own doctor.”
“Here’s a big guy in his line,” said David. “Sanford Hamilton, of New York, and a dozen other places. Has so much money he can’t count it, but just can’t stop making more. Has the habit.”
“Wish I could get a habit like that. Well, the Ryans own the two most worthless farms on God’s green earth, and I never can get over expectin’ to see a fine squirt of oil come leapin’ out of them, although the experts say they are as dry as dust. Who’s next on the list?”
“Dr. Martin Trigg, and Dr. Nicholas Sims. They are the two old professors from Princeton. Scientists of some sort—big bugs.”
“I helped ’em aboard,” said Red, chuckling. “One of ’em said ‘Thank you, my boy, thank you,’ just as pretty, but the other looked at me till I felt like a bug on a pin.”
“The next four I haven’t seen,” said David.
“Skip ’em,” counseled Red. “Reporters. Wild-eyed, sort of. You can always tell ’em. Always huntin’ a scoop for the next edition, regardless of time or place.”
“These two are men Commander Hammond is trying to interest in dirigibles.”
“Uh huh,” said Red. “Be polite.”
“Emil Hausen—he’s a German. We leave him at Friedrichshafen.”
“I must practice my German on him,” said Red. “I know four fine upstandin’ words:Ach du lieber Augustin. Would you think they’d sound homelike to the poor wanderer, Davie?”
“Try ’em!” laughed Davie; “I’ll pick up the pieces.” He wandered off, stopping to admire the salon. In one corner, at a small but perfectly appointed desk, Mr. Hamilton already sat dictating rapidly to his secretary. The great king of Wall Street was preparing to radio his orders, keeping a tight rein on his active money.
At a window the two old scientists, Doctors Trigg and Sims, quarreled in low, tense tones over something referred to in such lengthily technical terms that David did not know whether they had disagreed about dinosaurs, angleworms, or air currents. As David passed, the smaller of the two men looked up and nodded.
“Well, son,” he chirruped in a pleasant crisp voice, “making fair progress, I should say. This your first trip? Great experience; illuminating, developing. Make the most of it—you are young. Perhaps you will like it so well that before we have entirely circumnavigated the globe, you will have sprouted mental wings and will accept the ether for your habitat. I hope so—I hope so! Aerial navigation needs young blood, young enthusiasms.”
“Bosh!” retorted the second sage, Doctor Sims himself. “Bosh! There is no young enthusiasm; it’s grown old, money loving, comfort seeking; its bones creak. Don’t I know? Don’t I teach about a hundred and fifty youngsters every day of the week? Bah!”
“Sims, you are as dry as a dinosaur egg,” Doctor Trigg exploded. “As an instructor in grades equaling yours, I am also in a position to collect data and observe reactions. The world is moved by youthful enthusiasms. It is, thank God, an inexhaustible force, propelling the world; a force, Sims, which our instruments cannot gauge, which all your retorts and chemical tests cannot resolve into its component parts. And let me tell you, Sims, in the modern aviator there lives the spirit of the adventurers of all time; a gallant, intrepid and invincible army that comes marching down the gray ages to be reincarnated as the greatest of all the cavaliers of chance.
“For centuries they have been crusaders; they have sailed uncharted seas; they have braved killing heat and searing cold. They have fought the dragons of every age and clime, wrestling with the earth for jewels and gold, building glittering cities in desert places, throwing fairy bridges from crag to crag. Now, spurning the reclaimed earth, they have taken their indomitable courage and their boundless enthusiasm, Sims, into the limitless sea of the air, whose currents and eddies and tempests are more treacherous and terrible than ever beset any ocean.”
He had been tapping his words out on Doctor Sims’ bony knee. Suddenly realizing an acute discomfort there, Doctor Sims removed the knee abruptly, and looked up at David.
“Now you,” he remarked, ignoring his brother educator’s dissertation. “You’re planning to be a big newspaper man, aren’t you? Eh?”
“Why, no, sir,” said David.
“Automobile tires, then—automobile tires,” Doctor Sims cut in.
He seemed about to launch on a tirade against tires, and David spoke quickly. “I am an aviator,” he said, “and I want to thank Doctor Trigg for what he just said. It is all true;” and looking at the doctor with a light bow, he added, “and it is pretty fine for us youngsters to feel that men like you understand us, and are with us.” He smiled the smile that always won friends for him, and passed on into the little hallway.
Behind him he could hear Doctor Trigg burst into a loud cackle. He knew, without looking, that Professor Sims was dodging a skinny finger.
“What a peachy old card!” thought David. “And can’t he just pour out the language? He’s just right, too.”
In the hall outside the washroom he found Red. He seemed preoccupied.
“Hello,” he said. “Say, Dave, listen; do you hear a funny noise?”
David listened. “Why, yes. Sounds sort of squeakish. We are not near an egg, and there’s nothing over us but the crew’s quarters, is there?”
“Nothing over or under; but it’s a darned queer noise. You can’t hear it five feet away.” To prove it, he slid along with his ear pressed against the partition. “It’s here, somewhere, right here by Mr. Hammond’s cabin.” He went down on his knees. “Comes from low down. Now I can’t hear it at all. Damn queer!”
David also knelt, and they listened in silence, staring at each other. The sound was intermittent; a whiffling, wheezing squeak, and occasionally a faint tearing sound.
“Fabric going,” said David anxiously. “It’s not a bag, because the disturbance is low down by the floor.”
“Well, we got to find out about that,” declared Red. “It may be just a piece of cloth rattling at a window, or something, but there mustn’t be any unusual noises on a boat like this, where everything means something. I’d hate to have to turn back now.”
They stood up as Mr. Hammond entered the passageway. David explained their trouble.
“Under or over my room, eh?” he said, unlatching his door.
A small brown streak shot into the hall, recognized the paternal trousers, whirled and fell at Mr. Hammond’s feet in an ecstasy of delight.
“What the devil—why, you damned little runt, how do you happen to be here? It’s Dulcie’s pup, Koko.” He picked up the little fellow and petted him. “Dulcie must have shut him in my room while she was on board, and then the poor kid was so upset when she left that she must have forgotten the little beggar. Well, Koko, we can’t drop you offside, can we? We will just send a ’gram to your missie, and take you with us.”
“There’s our funny noise, Red,” laughed David.
“Gee, you had me scared, you little scoundrel!” remarked Red, with a sigh of relief.
“He hates to be shut up; I’ll bet he was chewing something up,” Mr. Hammond chuckled. “Well, I’m glad he’s here. I wish I’d brought Dulcie, too. She’d be just about as safe up here as she will be swimming and canoeing and dancing, and racing all over creation in that damned car of hers.” He looked at the boys, and saw that their eyes, staring over his shoulder into the little cabin beyond, were filled with amazement, amusement, and concern.
Red broke unexpectedly into a hearty laugh. “Well, Mr. Hammond—excuse us, sir! Beat it, Dave!”
They bolted into the salon, and Mr. Hammond turned to his room. What he saw there made his old heart leap. He dropped the dog.
“Dulcie!” he cried, and Dulcie ran into his open arms.
“You are a bad, bad girl!” he whispered presently. “You are a stowaway; and you have made a fool of your poor old father. Who put you up to this?”
“No one, daddy,” said Dulcie, rubbing her eyes which were full of tears and her nose which bore a nice imprint of rough tweed. “I knew you really wanted me, and you know my judgment is much better than yours in such things, so I just stayed quietly in here. I knew you would come in later, but Koko nearly spoiled it all. And you really do want me? I heard what you said. It’s a lesson to you, too; your child is going along wherever you go, and it only makes unnecessary scenes when you try to stop her.”
Mr. Hammond blew his nose loudly.
“Well, darling, I am glad you are here. Yes, I’m delighted; but don’t get it into your head that you have established a precedent. No, ma’am!”
“All right, precious. Now comb your hair; it looks all rat-taily. And take your bicarb; it is long past time for breakfast. I’m starved. That small suitcase is mine. I took your things out of it and put them all in your other one. You are a rotten packer, daddy. Please move the man in the next stateroom out when you get round to it. I’ll take it.”
“Do you mean,” said Mr. Hammond, grimly wagging a finger at the suitcase, “that you had this all cooked up yesterday?”
“Oh, for weeks, daddy darling. Did you honestly think I would consider letting you come alone? I’m surprised. I’m starved, too. What an appetite this nice high air gives one!”
“Come on to breakfast then,” Mr. Hammond groaned. “Let’s get it over with!”
“I don’t see any reason for you to be embarrassed, if I am not,” said Dulcie, doing a little careful work with a lipstick. “It was frightfully embarrassing for me to be left at home like a little girl.”
“Too bad!” growled Mr. Hammond, a twinkle in his eye that belied the tone. “Too bad! Well, gimme that infernal soda, and let’s go.”
“What’s in there?” said Dulcie, pointing to a large box on a chair. “Koko seems to think it’s something to eat. He nearly tore the paper.”
“He’s a smart little beggar,” said Mr. Hammond, in an offhand manner. “Oh, yes, that’s yours, that box. Candy—thought you might like to have it.”
“Daddy!” cried Dulcie, casting herself at him. “Daddy, you precious adorable old lamb-pie! You knew I would come!”
“Well, I confess I did have hopes you would pull it off,” said the adorable lamb-pie sheepishly.