The aeroplane is a wonderful invention, yet the point which really makes it so serviceable is a very simple one. For years inventors studied ways of making a heavier-than-air machine sail through the sky like a bird. Then the gasoline engine came, and all the rest seemed easy.
But no one could keep control of the aeroplane. It moved about according to its own whims, and tipped drivers out at its own sweet will. Then the Wrights thought of lifting and lowering the planes to represent the wings and feathers of a bird. The secret had been found and required only experience and practice. Here was a machine light enough to fly, yet strong enough to carry with safety its powerful engine and two or more passengers, if there is room provided for them.
It is so stout that a man may walk over it while it lies on the ground, and yet so delicate in control when in the air that a slight pull on a lever will dip one wing, lift the other, and at the same time turn a vertical tail-rudder about to give the necessary balancing pull with almost the instinctive adaptability of a bird’s wings and feathers.
And this wonderful machine, while speeding through the air with the velocity of an express train, can be halted almost instantly and whirled about on its tail. It will be seen that it is the man at the levers who makes or breaks a journey in the air. One man may do almost anything with a machine, while another may send himself to eternity with the same one. It was Ned’s good fortune that he was naturally ingenious and quick to make his hands follow the impulses of his brain.
When a person is thundering through the air, a thousand feet above the earth, he must remain perfectly calm, even with the engine thundering behind his ears, tears running in streams down his face, and the wind fluttering his clothes into rags and ravelings, as he wishes he was back on land.
Besides, there are no level plains in the air, as there are on earth. Every bird-man knows that he is liable to come up against a fierce current or tumble into a hole in the atmosphere at any moment. While traveling in water one can see what is ahead and on both sides, but this is not so in the air. The currents, swirls, eddies, holes, do not show at all.
When Ned left the caché where the gasoline and provisions had been hidden away, he put on half speed, swinging steadily skyward on a broad spiral. His purpose was to pass over the summit and have a look at the forests on the east side.
The passenger’s seat in the Wright machine is in the middle. The engine is at his right and the driver at his left, so that the balance is the same whether an extra person is carried or not. Jimmie was glad of this, for it placed him close to Ned. In that half light, with the earth far below, with the pounding of the engine and the whistling of the wind, the boy felt the need of close human companionship.
He sat in a wooden seat with his back against the rest, holding to one of the uprights with both hands, and resting his tingling feet on a cross-bar. A guy-wire passed across in front, close to his chest, so he was now fastened in.
He wanted to talk with Ned, to hear the sound of his voice, but the clamor of the engine prevented that, so he just sat still and looked down on the flying forest below. It seemed to him, at least, that the forest was moving, while he was standing still in the starlight.