“Well,” exclaimed the man, laughing, “it is certainly a nervy thing to do. But, good luck to you.”
There was no poling the Valkaria that evening, and the sail home was full of joy to all. The next morning, work on the aeroplane was resumed with new vigor. The braced car now occupied so much of the shop that, each morning, Captain Anderson and Andy carried it out to the sandy river shore, where it rested all day on “horses,” that the two workmen might have the entire shop for their further work.
It had been vaguely planned that the starting and landing wheels would be wooden and handmade. But from the moment Captain Anderson read the letter to Roy Osborne and confronted the possibility of exhibiting his work to a professional, he became additionally ambitious. Early Monday morning, he telephoned to Titusville for three old bicycle wheels with mending kits and a pump.
“Everything is right but the wheels,” he explained. “And if she don’t work, we can’t afford to have it because we fell down on them.”
That day and the next, Andy worked on the wheel mechanism and the brake, while Captain Anderson was at last wholly occupied with the bird-tail guide. The most delicate work was required for the “heart” of the contrivance, as he called it, which was the thin tail pinions of wood, each of which had to be worked out like the blade of a propeller.
The week went by with no word from Roy Osborne. At first Captain Anderson was inclined to twit Andy about his letter. But when he saw how seriously the boy viewed his own presumption, the sympathetic boat builder ceased his joking.
“He might have answered my letter, at least,” Andy would say.
Each day Ba sailed to Melbourne for the mail, and each time he came back with no communication from Daytona.
“By Saturday she’ll be ready for the engine, I think,” said Captain Anderson in mid-week.
“I reckon so,” replied Andy, rather ruefully. “But there’s no use o’ puttin’ the engine in her as long as we’ve got to tote her in and out of the shop every day.”