It seemed no time at all until camera men appeared, and nothing would do but that Dad must pose with Kiwi on his shoulder and Jack smiling by his side.
Within a few minutes planes from the other field began arriving. The pilots were amazed to find all three unhurt, and were loud in their praise of the marvelous way in which Dad had made the landing. He stood there, cool and collected, smoking a cigarette, the color now back in his tanned cheeks, his wavy chestnut hair very much awry as he took off his helmet and goggles. There was nothing to show of the tense strain he had been under except a slightly drawn look about his gray eyes. He was shorter and less striking in appearance than Jack, but the crowd of pilots singled him out and gave him that praise which only one pilot can give to another.
They made a fuss over Kiwi, too, and he had the feeling that he had been weighed and not found wanting—that in this emergency he had kept his head and done the right thing.
For the first time Dad seemed to notice Kiwi’s nondescript clothes as the photographers were snapping pictures. True, very little attention had been paid to what he wore. There had seemed to be so many other more important things to be looked after. But as they were riding back to their old hangar, Dad said, “Kiwi, I think tomorrow would be a good time for you and me to make a trip into town and we will get you a new outfit. If you will insist upon getting your pictures in the papers, the folks back home will want to see you in the sort of clothes a young aviator should wear.”
“Will it be a uniform, Dad, like yours?” Kiwi had asked.
“Absolutely, if that’s what you want,” had been Dad’s promise.
CHAPTER III
TROUBLE BREWS
THEY awoke the next morning to find that their adventure of the day before had made them famous. The newspapers all told of the fight for life over the flying fields of Long Island. They told of the real courage of the two men and the boy when an unforeseen mishap had so nearly ruined their plane and their chances for a long distance record.