The two boys sleeping so soundly in the glass cabin were Frank Graham and Phil Ewing. The car was a part of their novel monoplane airship, the Loon. And Frank and Phil had just made what was perhaps the first night flight in an aëroplane—certainly the first flight of a heavier-than-air sky craft through a nighttime storm of wind and rain.
Both boys lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the suburbs of this town they had their aërodrome from which, on an evening early in June, they had ventured on this flight. The Loon had already made many successful flights by day; but Frank and Phil, not satisfied with these, had at last carried out a flight by night.
“It’s goin’ to rain,” Phil had predicted that afternoon. “Hadn’t we better wait? It’s bound to rain after such a muggy day.”
“Well,” conceded Frank, “we’ve figured out that rain can’t hurt us. The plane is waterproof and curved so that it can’t hold water. We’ve put holes in the flat planes on the rear. Water can’t collect there. And, as far as personal comfort is concerned, our glass covered car ought to give us plenty of that.”
“All right,” answered Phil laughing, “but if we do go up I’ll bet we don’t get back home to-night.”
How his prediction was fulfilled has just been seen.
The boys met at their aërodrome, erected in a corner of a lumberyard owned by Frank’s father, soon after seven o’clock in the evening. Not until nearly eight o’clock was it wholly dark; then the sky grew suddenly black. Phil was still somewhat skeptical but neither had ever stopped when the other led the way and, a few minutes before eight o’clock, the monoplane shot out of the shed and was instantly out of sight—had there been spectators.
The yard watchman, Old Dick, fast friend and open admirer of the two boys, stood shaking his head and lantern for some minutes. Finally, when the rain began to fall and the wind broke into a half gale, he hastened to his shanty ’phone and called up Mr. Graham.
“Misther Graham,” reported Dick, “thim byes is off ag’in in that flyin’ machane.” Evidently there was some excited comment or question at the other end of the ’phone. “Yis,” Dick continued, “they’ll be not over five minutes gone, but ’tis rainin’ somethin’ fierce an’ I’m seem’ nather hide nor hair o’ thim since.”