“Well,” concluded Mr. Everdail, “here are the emeralds, minus the chain, which can easily be duplicated. And you know who’s who, and why the hangar seemed to be haunted, and all about the gum. Is there anything you don’t understand?—before Larry starts taking flying instructions from Jeff and you others join my wife and I for a cruise to Maine where I will leave Mrs. Everdail.”
“Yes, sir,” Larry responded. “We saw that parachute the man in the seaplane had come down with—the harness was unbuckled, so he wasn’t hurt in the drop. What I want to bring up is this: why did he desert the stunned pilot—and not appear when we landed there?”
“I wonder,” the millionaire was thoughtful. “I wonder what you would do if you had to make a ’chute jump and then, after the excitement discovered that the pilot was ‘out’ and had a blow on the temple—and with concealed jewels in his cockpit——”
“Guess I’d hide too!”
“But why were the chunks of gum put in the pilot’s cockpit and not in the passenger’s?” Larry persisted.
“You’re getting worse than I am,” grinned Sandy.
“The passenger was not an aviator,” the rich man retorted soberly. “He put them where he thought he would sit—in the wrong place, it happened. So, when they got the jewels, it was simpler to put them where the pilot could hide them, where the gum was.”
“Another reason would be,” Jeff said, “pilots use gum and it would look more natural for it to be stuck around where he did his control job than up forward, where the special agent had it in the amphibian.”
“That’s all that bothered me,” admitted Larry.
“And Pop! goes our mystery,” chuckled Dick.
Mrs. Everdail bent forward, and then looked up sharply.
“I don’t know about that?” She turned to her husband.
“Atley,” she said, excited and nervous. “Look here!” The man almost raced around the library table, bending close to where her finger touched the dark green showing through the adhesive gum.
“I don’t see anything—out of the way,” he replied to her look.
The Sky Patrol saw her expression and each grew taut with excitement at her next words.
“Don’t you see? Can’t you?” She raised her voice to a shrill pitch of excitement.
“I see one of the emeralds——”
“Don’t you see that it is pitted—burned—by acid?”
“Glory-gracious-golly!” Larry was agitated enough to couple all the exclamations.
“This isn’t the Everdail Emerald,” the lady was almost screaming, her hands trembled as she pointed. “It is the emerald that I had in the hotel room——”
“The imitation!”
“Yes, Atley! Oh——”
Dick turned to Larry.
“I just said, ‘Pop! goes our mystery.’” He had to laugh in spite of the grave situation, the new development, as he added:
“Well—‘Pop!’ Here comes our mystery back again!”
“Bigger than ever!” agreed Larry.
For once Sandy was absolutely speechless.
After their exciting day, the next two weeks proved more than dull to the youthful members of the Sky Patrol.
Nothing happened to clear up the mystery.
To the surprise of the yacht crew, Captain Parks kept them all busy preparing, the day after Mrs. Everdail’s dramatic discovery, for a run to Bar Harbor, Maine.
That was unusual. After a trip across the Atlantic, the yacht was ordinarily laid up for awhile, giving its crew some shore liberty.
Captain Parks, however, agreed with Mr. Everdail, who trusted him absolutely—if Sandy did not—that it would be wise not to give any person who had been on the yacht during its crossing any chance to get away.
“On the run,” Mr. Everdail told Sandy and Dick, “and while we lay over at Bar Harbor, you two can watch for anything suspicious. My wife won’t let me say that Mimi, the maid, could be guilty—besides, how could she get into Captain Parks’ safe?”
“I think, myself, some man of the crew would be the one to watch,” Dick agreed. “Maybe the steward, who could have a reason for getting into the captain’s quarters.”
“But it was a woman Larry saw, through the glasses, at the stern,” Sandy objected.
“Well, then—there’s the stewardess who attends to the ladies’ cabins,” argued Dick. “We can watch her.”
They did, but no one on board asked for shore leave, either on the day before lifting anchor or during the stay in the Maine waters. Dick and Sandy used ears and eyes alertly; but nothing suspicious looking rewarded their vigilance.
Larry, staying at the old estate home with Jeff, had some compensation, at least, for being separated from his chums. Not only could he keep an eye on things and be ready if Jeff called for an aide; as well, he had his daily instruction in ground school and in the air.
Already “well up” on all that books could tell about engines, types of airplanes, construction methods, rigging and even handling a craft in the air, he got the practical personal experience that is the only real teacher, and the thrill of donning the Gossport helmet, with its ear ’phones and speaking tube through which Jeff, in the second place of the amphibian or the airplane, instructed him, correcting faults or gave hints, was a real thrill.
He learned, first of all, not to start up an engine while the tail of the ship pointed toward a hangar, or other open building, or toward a crowd, in future, on a field.
The propeller blast threw a torrent of dust and as Jeff told him, he mustn’t become that most unpopular of airport nuisances, a “dusting pilot,” whose carelessness flung damaging clouds on airplanes in hangars and people on the fields.
Learning to warm up the engine, to check up on instruments, to keep the ship level while taxiing down the field to head into the wind, to make the turn, either in stiff wind or gentle breeze, so that the wind did not tip the craft and scrape wingtips—these and a dozen other things he acquired in several early lessons.
The second place of the airplane had been fitted with a set of dual controls, rudder bar, throttle and “joystick” so that Jeff, for two successive hops, let Larry put feet on his rudder bar and lightly hold the stick as Jeff manipulated the controls and explained, by use of the Gossport helmet, why he did this or that.
Jeff believed, as does every good instructor, that showing, and explaining, is necessary as a first step, but that a flyer is developed only by practice during which he makes mistakes and is told why they are mistakes and how to correct them, thus gaining confidence and assurance by actually flying.
“That-there time,” Jeff might say, “when the caretaker ‘playing mechanic’ and pulling down the prop till the engine catches, didn’t you open up the throttle too wide? Better to open it just enough to give the engine gas to carry along on—and even cut the gun a bit more to let it run fairly slow till it warms up. Turning her up to full eighteen hundred revs don’t gain while she’s cold, and it throws dust like sin!”
Or, as Larry taxied, learning to manage speed on the ground by use of wider throttle for more speed, cutting down the gas if the craft began going too fast, he would catch an error:
“Did you forget last time to put the stick back and make the blast on the elevators hold the tail down while we taxi? Sure, you did—but you won’t again, because you saw that if you didn’t we might nose over. You ‘over-controlled’, too, and almost nosed over before you caught it—and then, we were going so fast I don’t know what kept this-here crate from starting to hop.
“That’s right—easy movements always—don’t jerk the controls—take it fairly easy. And you are doing right to move the stick back to neutral this time when the tail came up—kick rudder a bit, isn’t she slanting to the right? That’s it, buddy, left rudder and back, and now the right rudder—there she is, headed right.”
Mostly, Larry caught his own mistakes in time.
Ordinarily cool-headed, he had to be told only once or twice, and reminded almost never that jerky manipulation of the controls was not good practice or helpful to their evolutions. Easy movements, continual alertness and a cool head stood him in good stead.
Seeing those fine qualities, Jeff had Larry thrilling and happy on the fourth day by letting the youthful enthusiast for aviation take over for a simple control job, straight, level flying.
“You’ll want to get the feel of the air, and see how stable the average modern crate is,” Jeff spoke through the Gossport tube. “How does that-there wing look to you—kind of dropping?—remember what I did—that’s the stuff, stick to the left a bit and back to neutral, so the other wing won’t drop! No use teetering back and forth. They put neutral position into a control so you can set ailerons or rudder or elevators where you want them and hold them.”
There was more than Larry had ever dreamed there would be to keep in mind: there was the maintaining of level flight; even in his simplest personal contact with the controls; then there was the job of keeping the horizon line at the right location by watching past a chosen spot on the engine cowling, else they would start to climb or go into a glide. There was the real horizon to distinguish from the false horizon, which an airman knows is, through some trick of the air, the visible horizon that is just a little bit above the true horizon, so that to hold level flight in a forward direction, that false horizon is not held on a line with the top of the engine cowling, but, to hold a line with the true horizon the marking point is held just a trifle below that false, visible horizon line.
Had that been all he had to comprehend Larry’s first control job would have been simple. There was much more to watch—the tachometer, to keep track of engine speed; the air speed was learned by watching the indicator on the wing of that particular type of airplane; the position of the nose with relation to the horizon had to be constantly noted and a tendency to rise or lower had to be corrected: little uprushes or warm air made the airplane tilt a trifle to one side or the other and ailerons had to be used to bring it back, the stick had to be returned to neutral gently at exactly the point of level flight after such correction and not sent to the other side or the craft tipped the other way and opposite aileron had to be applied; then there was the chosen point such as a church steeple, tall tree or other landmark selected as a point on the course to hold the nose on—that must be watched and a touch of rudder given if the craft deviated from its straight line.
Nevertheless, complicated as flying appeared to be on that first handling of joystick, rudder and throttle, Larry knew that the happiest time of his life would be his first successful solo hop, and that the complicated look of the maneuvers and the number of things to watch—level flight, direction, maintaining flying speed, seeing that altitude was maintained, that his own craft was not menacing or menaced by any other in the air, all these would become simple, second nature as soon as the flying hours piled up and gave him more skill and experience.
Morning and afternoon Jeff took him up.
Quick to learn, retentive of memory, not repeating the same mistakes—even working out some points for himself—Larry, at the end of the fifth day, was gratified to have Jeff, as he slipped off the Gossport, tell him:
“The only trouble about this-here instruction is that I’m scared you’re going to make a better pilot than your teacher.”
“Oh, thanks—but I never could be any better than you, Jeff.”
“Yes, you can,” the older man’s face became doleful. “You ain’t the kind to let that-there superstition bug bite you.”
“No,” admitted his pupil. “I think superstition is just believing something somebody else tells you until you are so busy watching out for something to go wrong that you aren’t ‘right on the job’ with your own work—or you are so busy waiting for some good thing to ‘happen’ that you don’t see Opportunity when it comes up because you’re not watching Opportunity—you’re watching Luck, or Omens.”
“Don’t I know it!” Jeff was rueful. “I want to kick myself sometimes—but when you know other folks has had their crates ‘jinxed’ by being in the same hangar with one that has got the name for being hoodooed—what would you do?”
“Just what I’m doing now,” Larry grinned. “I know Mr. Everdail paid the company for the ruined seaplane and moved it into the hangar, here. I know your airplane almost touches it, every night. But I don’t let that worry me, because——”
“Well, it worries me. I try not to let it, but the worry is there, no matter what I do. You see, I never thought, out in the marsh, about anything going wrong because I took that big wrench and put it in my tool kit after we salvaged it out of the water. But I dreamt about emeralds, last night, and so I went to a fortune teller gypsy woman and she told me a dream like that meant bad luck in business, and so I said I was a pilot and told her all about the seaplane——”
“You ought to be careful,” Larry interrupted. “If she puts two-and-two together, emeralds and a chase and a wrecked seaplane——”
“Oh, she was too busy talking to listen that close.”
“They’re awfully quick—the way they guess what’s in your mind proves that.”
“Oh, she won’t think anything about it. Anyhow, she told me not on any chance to touch that cracked up seaplane or anything that ever was on it—and so—I put the jinx on my own crate without meaning to.”
“I’m still willing to learn in it.”
“Well—I don’t know—it worries me.”
“It doesn’t bother me, Jeff.”
And it didn’t, for several more busy days.
“Hello, Sandy! How are you, Dick?” Larry met the returning chums as they climbed to the small estate wharf from the yacht tender, and while they strolled up the path he asked eagerly:
“Anything new? Anything suspicious?”
“Not even our Sandy could discover a thing,” Dick confided.
“Those emeralds aren’t on the yacht,” Sandy declared. “Captain Parks helped us by sending most of the crew ashore while Mr. Everdail took his wife to their woods camp. We went over the yacht——”
“With a fine-tooth comb!” Dick broke in. “We did make one big discovery, though.”
Larry turned toward him quickly.
“What?”
Dick tried to conceal the twinkle in his eye, but it got the better of him as he explained.
“We found a string of beautiful, perfect emeralds in the stewardess’ cabin, hung up on a nail.”
“Honestly?”
“Positive-ully, Larry! The finest that ever came out of a ten-cent store!”
“Oh—you——”
“Sandy suspected her right away!” went on the jovial one, “but no arrest was made.”
“What have you discovered?” Sandy asked Larry quickly, to cover his impulse toward assaulting the teasing chum.
“Not a thing—except I learned that the injured pilot was able to sit up and I went to see him.” Dick and Sandy waited anxiously for a revelation, but Larry was unable to give one.
“He is named Tommy Larsen,” Larry informed them. “He’s getting well fast. He was glad that his passenger had been wrong in suspecting the Everdails——”
“You didn’t tell him the emeralds we found were the imitations?”
“No, Sandy. He thinks they were the real ones.”
“What did he say to explain about his passenger not helping him, and then taking the boat?”
“The man came while I was there,” Larry told Dick. “He is named Deane, and he’s a nice-looking, quiet chap. It seems that when he landed with his ’chute, he came down and struck some driftwood or an old log, and it knocked the wind out of him. When he got back strength to cut himself loose, he tried to get to the seaplane but his landing, as I explained the location—well, you saw it when you flew over—his landing was made a couple of hundred yards away. I got the gardener to take me to the place, yesterday, in the hydroplane. There was a big, sunken log close to the torn ’chute.”
“Did he see you, that day?”
“No. He tried to swim over, turned sick, crawled onto some mud that was out of water and stayed there. I guess he fainted. When he managed to get there, we had taken Tommy Larsen away—so he’s cleared!”
“I don’t see that!”
“Why—Sandy! We left with the pilot—I mean, Jeff did. Then the hydroplane came for me, and when he got there, afterward, don’t you see that if he was guilty of anything, he’d have taken the chewing gum?”
“He might have seen that one chunk was gone, suspected that the hiding place was discovered and left the rest——”
“Suspicious Sandy!” Dick laughed. “With twenty-nine lovely emeralds to recover—and a rubber boat to get away in!”
“All right! All right! He’s an innocent man.”
“As innocent as the man I helped capture—Mr. Everdail’s friend, that man we put on the wrecking tug for five hours.”
“Everybody is innocent,” declared Dick. “Sandy, my advice to you, for your birthday, tomorrow, is to turn over a new leaf and instead of looking for people to suspect, try to think where those emeralds can be.”
“They’re not on the yacht, you say,” Larry said to take away the sting to Sandy’s pride. “They aren’t in the old house. They were taken from the captain’s safe—where did they go?”
“You tell me who knew the way to get into the captain’s safe and I’ll try to get the emeralds.”
“Captain Parks says no one ever was told that combination.”
“All right, Dick,” Sandy replied to the chum who had just spoken. “You’ve answered Larry’s question.”
“Golly-glory-gracious! It does look that way!”
“Who else could be safer?Hesays the emeralds were gone andhis word is his bond! Oh, yes!”
“Then the emeralds won’t be found,” concluded Dick. “Captain Parks has been ashore, and away, hours at a time, here and in Maine.”
“Let’s see if Mr. Everdail won’t listen to us about that, now.”
Dick’s suggestion was followed.
The millionaire listened gravely to their statement and broke into a hearty laugh.
“As I live and breathe!” he said. “You members of Jeff’s Sky Patrol are working for the wrong side. You ought to be with that London lad, who suspects my wife and her cousin, Miss Serena, and me! Oh—this is great! You’re helping me a whole lot. I think I must increase the allowances for Suspicious Sandy, Detective Dick and—er—Follow-the-Leader Larry.”
He turned his frowning lips and smiling eyes on the latter.
“I’m amazed at you, though. Jeff says you’ve got good judgment.”
“Captain Parks had opportunity—he knew you would take his word—no one else knew his safe combination. Isn’t that common sense, sir?”
“It’s a kind of sense that’s common enough—but——”
“Who else could get the emeralds?” persisted Sandy.
“Well, let’s see. Besides Captain Parks, there’s—” his voice trailed off; once he shook his head at some thought; once he scowled; finally he shook his head defiantly.
“As I live and breathe—it looks—but I won’t believe it! Not Billy Parks. He’s——”
“All right, sir,” Larry said. “We thought we ought to report what came into our minds. But we can’t prove anything, of course.”
“All right, my boy. Watch him, trail him, whatever you like. I’ll give you each a thousand dollars if you can prove——”
“How can we, unless we catch him—and the emeralds are gone——”
The millionaire swung on Sandy as the youth spoke.
“Wait—let me finish. A thousand dollars if you’ll prove—Parks is innocent!”
“Oh!”
He turned, dismissing them as he greeted his cousin, Miss Serena, who had declared that his wife would be better off alone to rest in the quiet camp in Maine. Miss Serena, with a will of her own, had come back, determined, if the rich man proposed to stay at his old estate, that she would assemble a group of servants and manage the house for him. The three chums sidled out, neither of the three counting on the payment of that, to them, large sum.
“There’s money we’ll never get,” said Sandy.
The others agreed.
Sandy’s birthday dawned hot, but clear, with a good, steady south wind blowing.
The rich man had not forgotten Sandy. A fine set of books awaited him at the breakfast table, a set of engineering books that he would prize and study for many years.
Larry’s remembrance, a radium-dial wrist watch, and Dick’s gift, the set of drawing implements he coveted, delighted him. Jeff’s modest but earnestly presented “luck charm” secured from his gypsy fortune teller was accepted with a grave, grateful word—but Sandy had hard work not to break into a wild laugh.
“How old are you, buddy,” Jeff asked.
“Thirteen!”
Jeff’s face grew sober.
“And this is Friday!” he murmured.
“Surely it is,” laughed Larry, and then, in a lower tone, he urged, “now, Jeff——”
“No, sir! I won’t go up, today, even if you did plan to surprise——”
“You would spoil it!” Larry was unable to keep from being annoyed, almost angry, because Jeff had spoiled a surprise.
“We might as well tell you, Sandy, now that it’s ‘all off’,” Dick said. “We were going to give you another present—a hop over your own house in Flatbush—with Larry for pilot! But——”
“Oh, never mind Jeff. Let’s go!”
“Don’t be silly, Jeff,” Mr. Everdail chided the pilot. “Check over everything and then go up. You know mighty well that accidents don’t come from ‘hoodoos’. They come from lack of precaution on the pilot’s part. The weather charts for today give perfect flying weather. The airplane is in fine shape. Go ahead—give the lads a treat!”
“On your heads be it!” Jeff said somberly.
He did not neglect his duty. For all his nonsense about omens and such things, he gave the airplane a careful checkup, warmed up the engine for Larry himself and made sure that everything he could foresee was provided for.
Sandy, thrilled at the prospect of a hop with his own comrade doing the control job, was full of fun and jokes.
Dick, no less eager to see Larry perform his new duties, wasn’t behind Sandy in good humor.
Larry, though quiet, was both confident and calm.
He did not forget to assure himself, by a final look at the windsock indicating the wind direction, that the breeze had not shifted.
Neither did he “dust” the hangar, nor lose his straight course as he taxied across the field at an angle to turn, without scraping wings or digging up turf with the tail skid.
A final test, with chocks under the wheels, the signal for the wheels to be cleared by the caretaker, a spurt of the gun for several seconds to get the craft rolling as the elevators were operated to lift the tail free, a run at increasing speed, picked up quickly because of the short runway—stick back, lifting elevators so the propeller blast drove the tail lower and the nose higher—and they left the ground.
Stick back from neutral, after leveling off for a bare two seconds to regain flying speed, and they climbed, the engine roaring, Jeff nodding but making no comment through the speaking tube he still used. Dick shouted a hurrah! Sandy joined him.
Over the hangar they rose, and Larry, holding a more gentle angle to avert a stall, continued upward until his altimeter gave him a good five hundred feet.
Then, choosing a distant steeple as in direct line with the course he would fly toward Brooklyn, to be out of any airline around the airports, he made a climbing turn, steadied the craft, straightening out, went two thousand feet higher to be doubly safe—and drew back his throttle to cruising speed.
“Who says this airplane is hoodooed?” shouted Sandy, jubilantly.
And then—the hoodoo struck!
Flying close to three thousand feet above Oyster Bay, level and stable, the airplane seemed to be in perfect condition.
Jeff, for all his superstition, would have given it as a pilot’s opinion that only some mistake on Larry’s part, or a quitting engine, leaving them with a dead stick, could cause danger.
Just the same the unexpected happened!
“There’s where President Roosevelt lies,” Dick, in the last seat, because their places were rearranged by Larry’s position as pilot, indicated to Sandy, just ahead of him, the cemetery beneath them.
Very tiny, in its iron fenced enclosure, the last resting place of a national idol, was almost invisible with its simple headstone; but Dick’s statement was understood by Sandy to mean the location more than the exact spot.
“I’ll get Jeff to ask Larry to spiral down for a better look,” Sandy decided.
He transmitted the suggestion.
“Sandy wants to see President Roosevelt’s place in the cemetery,” Jeff spoke into the tube of the Gossport helmet Larry still used.
“There it is, just off our left wing, buddy. That’s right—stick goes to the left and a touch of left rudder, but when you moved the stick sidewise to adjust the ailerons you neglected that-there bit of forward movement to tip us down into a glide. Remember, it’s the double use of the stick that works ailerons and elevators both.”
Larry had overlooked that point for the instant. It was his only difficulty in flying, to recollect always to control all the different movements together. The joystick, operating the wing-flap ailerons by the left-or-right, lateral movement, also raised or depressed the elevators by forward-or-backward movement. However, in any lateral position, the forward and backward set of the stick worked the elevators and in executing a control maneuver, even as simple as going into a bank combined with a turning glide, or downward spiral, the movement of the stick should be both slightly sidewise, for sufficient bank, and, with the same movement, slightly forward, for depressing the nose into a glide, returning the stick from slightly forward back to neutral to avoid over-depressing the nose into too steep a glide; if not put back in neutral when the right angle was attained, the depressed elevators would continue to turn the forward part of the craft more steeply downward.
“Not too steep, Larry. Back with the stick.”
Just at the instant that Larry was about to obey Jeff’s instruction a gust of air, coming up warm, tilted the lifted wing more, and as he corrected for that, trying to get the wing up and the nose higher for a flatter spiral, his movement was a little too sharp, and the sensitive controls, working perfectly, but too sharply handled, sent the craft into an opposite bank, rolling it like a ship in the trough of a sidewise wave.
Also, Larry meant to try to draw the stick backward at the same time, coordinating both corrections; but Jeff, a little less calm than usual because of the superstitious fears that kept riding him, neglected to speak the words by which he would inform Larry thathewas “taking over” until the correction was made.
By that neglect, both drew back on the stick at the identical instant, and the nose came up much too sharply.
Larry, not aware that Jeff meant to handle the job, almost pulled the stick away from Jeff in his anxiety to get the nose down again, and Dick, in the last seat, thought he felt a sort of thud.
“Hands off! I’ll take over!” Jeff said tardily.
He drew back on the stick for, with the throttle rather wide—because Larry had feared a stall as the nose went up and had thrust the throttle control sharply forward—the craft began to go down in a very steep glide, not quite a dive, but with engine on full gun, sending it in a sharp angle toward earth.
Naturally, when he pulled back on the stick and it did not yield, Jeff shouted through the speaking tube, “Let go!” for he thought Larry had lost his head and was fighting his control.
Larry was not doing anything. He had removed his hand from the stick, his feet merely touched the rudder bar.
Jeff called out something.
They did not realize his words, but Sandy saw his expression.
Almost as though he had been able to hear, Sandy knew Jeff’s idea.
“The jinx has got us.”
Jeff cut the gun swiftly, and came out of the bank pointed toward the wide, shimmering waters of Oyster Bay.
“What’s the matter?” Larry swung his head to call back.
“Stick’s jammed!” Jeff grunted through the tube.
“Jammed?”
“Stuck. It won’t come back. It’s the jinx! Hoodoo! We’re heading down for the bay and I can’t get the nose up!”
Dick, from the back place, saw Jeff struggling with the stick.
If he did not hear, at least his flying study informed him that something had gone amiss.
Equally, his quick mind arrived at a good guess at the trouble.
The only reason Jeff would swing toward the water and give up working with the stick must be that the stick would not operate the elevators.
And that, to Dick, spelled disaster.
Its speed accelerated at the start by the engine the airplane picked up speed rapidly because its nose was steadily going down.
Jeff tugged madly again.
The stick, part of an installed auxiliary control for instruction work, snapped out of its bed.
Jeff flung it disgustedly out to the side.
Larry sat quietly, knowing well that in no time they would be diving toward a wet, deep bay—and the end!
Sandy, not fully aware of the situation, but tense, thought of his ’chute, in the seat-pack. Would there be time? Could he use it? He waited, watching Jeff and Larry.
None of the three noticed Dick.
Seconds counted, he knew.
If the stick was jammed, it might be possible to get into the fuselage. There he might operate the elevator cable by hand enough to get that nose up more, flatten the glide, maybe enough to enable Larry, who alone had a stick, to swing around and come down on land—somehow.
A crack-up would not be as bad, perhaps, as a plunge, a dive into the bay!
Before his mind flashed the recollection that in construction plans he had seen provision for getting into the after part of the fuselage.
Not wasting a second, he was already free from his safety belt, climbing with agile quickness for all his plumpness, onto the fuselage.
It was a fearful risk.
Their speed sent them through the air so fast that the wind was a gale there on the unprotected top fabric of the fuselage.
With his cotton-stuffed ears tortured by the pressure, with the fierce wind tearing at him, Dick clutched the seat top as he tore away the fabric flap covering a sort of manhole back of his place.
Headfirst he plunged in, scrambling, instantly beginning to seek the points where the control cables passed through channeled guides at each side.
He was in a dark, stuffy, closely confined and narrow space, his legs hanging out in the roaring gale, unable to see, half suffocated by the fumes collected in that restricted area.
He found a cable with exploring hands.
He tugged at it.
It was slack. That told his feverishly acute intelligence that it was the cable whose lever did not operate. He had seen that Jeff, when he flung the stick forward to try to free it, had been able to pull it back again without operating the elevators.
Almost as his hand touched the cable and twitched at it, his other hand, as he lay with his weight on his chin, face and chest, contacted something else—a large, roundish object, feeling like a spare landing wheel tire.
He knew as though the light photographed the truth to his eyes, that this tire-like object had moved, shifted, fallen onto the cable, wedging it.
Instantly Dick pushed it into the center of the small space.
Gripping the cable, he twitched it sharply once—twice—three times!
In the dark, he did not know how close the water was. He could not tell if his alertness had been able to give back the use of the elevators in time.
Larry, his hand idly on the useless stick, felt it twitch three times.
Automatically he tested it. It came back, and the nose began to come up a trifle. He did not dare over-control. He had learned that lesson!
The water was rushing up at them—but the stick—might——
Seconds to go!
He must not drag the ship out of that dive too swiftly—a wing might be torn off.
But with his nerves taut, by sheer power of his cool will forcing himself to work steadily but not sharply, he brought the nose up, closing his eyes to that wild nightmare of water seeming to be leaping toward the airplane.
Jeff shut his eyes. Then he opened them again. No use to try a jump, no use to do anything but be ready if——
Sandy braced himself.
The airplane was flattening out!
Larry was operating the stick!
The nose came up steadily—with a fraction of time to the good, they began to come out of the glide to level flight.
Larry braced himself against the slap of the wheels into the surface water. That might offer just enough resistance to nose them in.
He must be ready to open the throttle and pull up the nose—but he must not do it too soon, or do it at all in his strained, excited state—he might go too far.
Level! The airplane skimmed, it seemed to Larry, inches above the slightly ruffled water.
Gently he drew back the stick, opening the throttle carefully.
“Golly-to-gosh!” he muttered, “that was close——”
When he had lifted the craft and headed for home, he glanced back.
Two legs waved over the last cockpit place.
And in that ridiculous position Dick, a hero upside down, came to earth at the end of Sandy’s birthday flight—on the thirteenth, a Friday, as Jeff, white and shaken, hastened to remind them.
“But you sure done some swell control job,” he told Dick.
“Thanks,” Dick retorted, without smiling.
He turned to Larry.
“You did the trick, Larry,” he declared. “I only loosened the cables—freed them——”
“What made them jam, I wonder?” mused Sandy.
“The jinx!”
Dick turned on Jeff.
“Yes,” he said very quietly for him. “The jinx! The hoodoo. I think it’s broken, though—in fact, I know it is.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Dick began to chuckle, “I’ve thought of a sure way to break it.”
“How?” Jeff was regaining his color and his curiosity.
But Dick grinned and shook his head.
He knew the answer to the puzzle of the missing emeralds!
“Glad to hear you think the hoodoo is busted,” Jeff commented. “Me, I don’t care. I’ve taken my last hop in that-there crate. I’m shaking like a leaf, even now.”
“Why don’t you go to your room and have a lie down?” suggested Dick.
Jeff decided that Dick had the right idea.
Dick watched him go along the gravel path, watched him climb to the side veranda of the big house, pausing for a moment to tell the newly installed housemaid about his recent adventure.
“I think I’ll go get some lunch,” observed Larry.
“Wait!” urged Dick, but said no more.
Mr. Everdail’s cousin, Miss Serena, evidently hearing the voices, came out on the veranda and listened.
“She’s coming out to ‘make over us,’ as she calls it.” Sandy saw the elderly, stern-faced, but kindly lady descend the steps and come rapidly toward them.
“My! My!” she called, coming closer. “What is this I hear from Jeff?”
“We had a little trouble,” Dick said. “Somehow the cable for the ‘flippers’ got jammed, but Larry got us out of the trouble like a born flyer.”
“Yes,” laughed Larry. “After Dick guessed what to do so I could work the stick.”
“Oh, I only crawled back to loosen the cable.” Dick tried to make his exploit seem unimportant. “First time I ever flew around standing on my head,” he broke into his infectious gurgle of laughter. “Sandy, did I look like a frog stuck in the mud?”
“Whatever you looked like,” Sandy retorted, “you did a mighty big thing, crawling out onto that open covering in the wind, risking being snatched off or slipping, or having the airplane shake loose your grip!”
“I agree with Sandy,” Miss Serena declared. “It was a very fine thing——”
“I think so,” agreed Sandy. “He gave me one gift for my birthday at breakfast. But just now he made me a present of my life.”
“He did that for all of us.” Larry put an arm affectionately around his chum’s shoulders.