“Why doan’ yo’ trabel? Yo’s only walking; we ain’t half trying; can’t yo’ put on more steam and make us show what we can do? I’m plum disgusted wid yo’.”
Harvey Hamilton did not speak. He was “letting out” the machine. He meant to learn what it could do. When several hundred yards ahead of the train, he lifted the lip of the rudder in front, and the structure glided upward until he was a quarter of a mile above the earth. Even then Bohunkus behaved so extravagantly that the aviator turned his head and motioned to him to cease.
“Can’t doot, Harv! My mouf am so wide open dat it’ll take me a good while to bring my jaws togeder agin, and I’m ready to tumble out head fust.”
By and by the colored youth toned down enough to resume his seat and check his explosions of delight, though he looked around and waved his hand several times at the train which was now so far to the rear that his action was not understood.
“Gee! but it’s getting cold!” he exclaimed some minutes later, with a shiver. He buttoned his thick coat to the chin, donned his mittens, and wondered what it all meant. He had never understood, though he had been told more than once, that temperature decreases with increasing altitude. He had objected to donning such thick garments when about to start on their flight, but Harvey was the boss and insisted.
Bohunkus’s next surprise came when he looked between his feet. They were directly over the city noticed some time before, but the buildings were shrunken and mixed together in a way that even he understood.
The anemometer suspended at the side of Harvey Hamilton showed that the aeroplane was coursing through the air at the rate of not quite a mile a minute. With the low temperature caused by the altitude, the wind created in the still atmosphere cut the faces of the two like a knife, and even penetrated their thick clothing. Bohunkus turned up his coat collar, and drew his cap over his ears, but his feet ached. He hoped the aviator would soon strike milder weather, though the colored youth did not know whether it was to be sought for above or below.
“If it gits colder as yo’ go up,” he reflected between his chattering teeth, “it must be orful cold when yo’ reach heben; I remember now dat I was tole something ’bout dat, but I thought dey was fooling me.”
The front rudder still sloped upward, and Harvey showed no intention of dropping lower or even of maintaining the level already reached. He and his companion had started on a week or ten days’ outing, and it struck him that now was as good a time as he was likely to have for making a notable record.
So the propeller kept humming and they continued to climb. A glance at the barograph by his side showed that he had reached five thousand feet; to this he added another thousand, then another, and he felt a thrill when the indicator made known he was close to nine thousand.