CHAPTER IX
A BOMB-DROPPING EVENT
“I say, Davis, have you got anything to do with that queer layout yonder?”
“Dallow and Hardy have, I think.”
“What’s the stunt?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
The questioner was named Burr Rollins, and he was the one aviator on the field for whom neither Mr. Davis, Bob nor Ben, nor in fact anybody else at the meet, had much use.
The only merit about the man was that he was unquestionably a fair aeronaut. He had a small, but good machine, and he knew how to handle it. He was surly, suspicious, and on occasions an ugly customer, quick to resent fancied wrong, and harboring resentment in a vicious and sometimes dangerous way when any one crossed his path.
He considered John Davis to be the big stumbling block in his career. This was because the old aviator, through his cool, courageous ways generally discounted his brilliant but erratic flights with a coherent record.
“Rollins hates me because I have beaten him in the test flights,” Mr. Davis had observed to Ben and Bob one day. “He is afraid of me, though, because he knows I am right. I am holding him up to a fair, square-dealing programme. He doesn’t altogether like that, for he is a resourceful man, and full of slippery tricks. I’ve made him respect me, though, and some day he may learn to drop those grouches of his and act like a civilized being.”
“That helper of his, the young fellow he calls Dick, is about as gruff a customer as you meet,” Bob had observed. “Ever run up against him, Ben?”
“No, I have noticed him practicing at a distance, and thought he did pretty well.”
“There he goes now.”
“Eh, that boy?” exclaimed Ben, with a stare. “Oh, I know him by sight. Why that is Dick Farrell. He’s a cousin of Dave Shallock.”
“You mean the fellow you had some trouble with, the son of the engineer who was discharged from the Saxton Automobile Works.”
“Yes,” assented Ben, with a lively memory of the fellow on the fence the night he had last met Dave Shallock.
“You told me about him,” said Bob. “Look out for this fellow, if he’s like that ill-natured cousin of his.”
Now, just as the various bird-men about the field were preparing for practice ascents and stunts, Rollins, after his unsatisfactory query from Mr. Davis, stood glumly watching Ben and Bob who had got aboard the machine.
“Let her go!” shouted Ben, and Mr. Davis lent a hand in sending the wheels spinning, and then at the end of a little run the Flyer made a graceful lateral soar, and struck a fair equilibrium about two hundred and fifty feet from the ground.
Bob was strapped to the operator’s seat, hands, feet and eyes doing just the right thing at the right moment. Ben sat three feet behind him, slightly to one side. The machine was constructed to accommodate several passengers and was delicately framed as to nicety of balance.
“Got the bag all right, Ben?” shot back Bob, as the monoplane, after describing a dizzying circle that made Ben hold his breath, turned its planes upward and shot into the air to a still higher level.
“Right in my lap.”
“Have it ready.”
“There goes the opening gun for the beginning of the endurance tests on the spiral trials.”
“We’ll do our own stunt on that after the crowd get through,” advised Bob. “We’ll just do a bit of floating for the present.”
Ben had never been so happy and elated in his life. It was a glorious experience, that of the ensuing sixty minutes. The atmosphere was just right for safe sailing. There were no sudden gusts of air, no strong cross currents. Bob kept the Flyer on a course of magnificent long sweeps, several times circling the aviation field.
Thus it was easy for both boys to become comfortable spectators of what was going on, surveying the various airships in all their spectacular manoeuvres from a superior height.
“A regular private box party, aren’t we?” chuckled Bob.
“It’s wonderful,” assented his entranced companion. “There goes the Torpedo.”
“Yes, and that Dick Farrell is aboard.”
“He knows how to whiz.”
“Whew! That’s about all he does know. H’m! that was a narrow graze,” commented Bob, as the Torpedo nearly collided with a scudding biplane. “Some day that fellow will meet his Waterloo.”
After a spell the air began to clear of the exhibitors and their machines.
“Now we’ll give Mr. Davis a genuine thrill,” announced Bob. “Get ready, Ben.”
“I’m all ready, Bob.”
The young aviator brought the Flyer directly over the field. They were now on a one-thousand-foot level. Bob kept the machine directly over that part of the enclosure which he and Ben had plotted with their boxes early that morning.
Ben opened the bag in his lap.
“Fire at the warships!” ordered Bob.
“With oranges for bombs,” added Ben, displaying the fruit in his lap.
His words let out the secret of the designed exploit. Ben in his studies on aeronautics had found that the deepest scientific interest was evinced in the practicability of using airships in warfare.
What the boys had done that morning was to plot a space to represent the decks of warships. Each box commanded a radius of about three hundred feet. Bob set the motor at its swiftest, and as to height and variation of course followed imitated the probable cautious and expert manoeuvres of a real war airship evading the peril of rifle or cannon shots from a genuine enemy below.
Ben poised his bombs with all the accuracy and skill he could command. It was a new and novel exploit in which he had no practice. The constant turnings of the monoplane were confusing, but after the first half dozen of the experiments Ben began to get the knack of poising and dropping the projectiles.
“They didn’t all go wild, I think,” he said, as the last orange performed its mission.
“We’ll get below and see how you have panned out as to bombardment,” said Bob. “I’ll try a record on plain aero stunts before we land, Ben.”
“Careful, Bob!” warned Ben, as his daring comrade made a sensational dive.
“The spiral dip,” announced Bob. “Hold your breath.”
“Whew!” ejaculated Ben.
In a whirling top-like series of gyrations, such as Ben had seen a bicycle spin in a crack trick display, Bob manipulated the Flyer. It described a perfect spiral effect for nearly eight hundred feet. Then with a sharp veer the machine turned its planes and shot upwards. A second venturesome figure eight followed. Amid a tremendous ovation from the spellbound crowd, the Flyer struck on its wheels, bounded, rose, dropped again, and slid one hundred yards to a graceful stop.
“You’re an artist, Bob,” declared Ben enthusiastically, as they climbed from the machine.
The boys proceeded over to that part of the field where they had set the boxes. Mr. Davis was leading a crowd along the line. Two men accompanied him, one carrying a measuring line. The other was making notations on a tab of paper.
The old aviator waved his hand at his young assistants in a cheering fashion as they reached the last box.
“Well, boys, you did finely in your bomb-dropping event,” he announced.
“How’s that?” inquired Bob.
“Good enough to start a record,” was the reply. “Eleven points out of a possible twenty-five. You’ll have a column or two in the newspapers for this exploit, Ben Hardy. If I do as well as that myself, Saturday, I’m in for first mention at the convention, sure.”