“The only way is to start the thing, with Bunk in his seat; I run alongside for a few steps and spring into my seat.”
“You might slip and let the aeroplane get away from you. Then Bunk would be thrown out on his head.”
“He wouldn’t be hurt if he landed that way,” replied Harvey with a laugh, “but he might alight on his shins and that would be bad.”
“Let me show you a better plan.”
Abisha strode to the woodpile and came back with a long, strong stick. He set one end in the ground, with the upper inclined against the footboard. The prop thus gained held the biplane immovable before a strong push.
“Let her shove all she wants to,” explained the man, “and when you’re ready, kick the stick aside.”
“The scheme could not be better,” said Harvey admiringly, as he made sure that the point in contact with the machine could not injure it. He seated himself and Abisha swung the propeller around; the engine instantly responded with its deafening roar and a powerful thrust was exerted against the prop. In a few minutes, the youth leaned over, grasped the stick and swung it aside. The machine made a bound like a runner starting on a race, spun over the ground for a hundred feet or more, and then in obedience to the upturned rudder in front, leaped clear of the ground. She was off.
Harvey glanced back. In the door was the smiling housewife, with her husband on the spot where he stood when the flight began. He waved his hand in salutation and the two aviators responded.
This is a good place in which to give the explanation that must be made in order to understand how it came about that these two youths were so far from home, and engaged upon the outing that was destined to prove the most memorable in the life at least of one of them.
Harvey Hamilton was the son of a wealthy merchant, whose business took him to New York every week-day morning. The youth was preparing to enter Princeton University, and his elder brother Dick was a student in Yale. In the beginning of the summer the family separated, each member indulging his or her taste in the way of vacation, with the parent glad to pay the bills. The mother and daughter Mildred went to the White Mountains, Dick to the Adirondacks with a party of students, while Harvey and his father took a jaunt through a part of Europe, sailing home from Naples on the Duca degli Abruzzi. Wife and daughter, knowing when they were due, were at home to meet them. Dick was still in the mountains, from which he wrote the most glowing accounts of his life in camp and conquests of the gamy trout that are still to be found in the cool streams.