Another minute, and the airplane in which Tom Raymond sat was trundling along over the even surface of the aviation field, gaining speed as its engine warmed to the work.
Jack Parmly stood and watched with keen interest. Not that he entertained the slightest doubt concerning the ability of Tom Raymond to accomplish this new test which the flying-master had imposed on the aspiring students. Jack believed Tom equal to anything that any other aviator could carry out, given a little time for practice.
They were great friends, and had been ever since childhood. They lived in the town of Bridgeton, Virginia. As Jack had hinted, Tom’s father was an inventor, and several successful labor-saving devices were associated with his name. He had also perfected more than one apparatus useful in the saving of life at sea and in time of accident.
Since the great World War had broken out in Europe Mr. Raymond was devoting his talents to an altogether different task—that of discovering means for bringing the conflict to a speedy close by giving the advantage to the side whose cause he favored.
Tom, usually a quiet, reserved lad, had always been deeply interested in aeronautics. From childhood he had read every book or article he could get hold of that contained accounts of balloon voyages, and later on records of the progress made in airplane building and manipulation.
When the Wrights were starting on their wonderful experiments with a heavier-than-air flying-machine Tom began to lose interest in his school studies, for his brain was filled with the amazing possibilities that awaited a successful termination of their work and that of the French experimenters who were working along similar lines.
Time passed on, and with the breaking out of the European conflict the race to utilize this discovery led to rapid rivalry in the field of aviation. Things were becoming of everyday occurrence that but three years back would have been considered utterly impossible.
The fever continued to burn with ever-increasing strength in Tom Raymond’s veins until he could be restrained no longer. His father, realizing that it was of no use to try to deny him his one consuming wish, made arrangements for him to go to the nearest Government aviation field where a school for novices who aspired to learn how to fly was being organized. This was located in Virginia.
Jack Parmly had anticipated this action, and somehow had managed to influence his widowed mother to allow him to accompany his chum. Mrs. Parmly was of long American lineage and intensely patriotic. Though it grieved her sorely to give up her only son, she believed that his country had the first claim upon his services.
Her husband had been a volunteer officer during the Spanish war; though retiring again to private life at its close; and from away back to the Revolution the Parmly family, as well as her own, had always taken their parts in the wars of their country.