Alan merely nodded his head, with a quick glance below, and then brought the airship slightly off the southeast breeze. There was a small dip to port, enough to make Ned and Roy “give” in their legs like old sailors on a pitching deck and the starboard door flew fully open. As the craft righted on a level keel again Ned explained:
“Take the lookout below, Osborne, and if we miss, pass the word to Alan at once by tube. I’ll attend to the crane.”
“If you don’t mind,” responded Roy, “I’d like to take charge of the pick-up, this time at least. Then, if it fails, it won’t be because the operator don’t understand it.”
“Get busy then,” responded Ned, granting the request with a wave of his hand. “When you’re ready let Stewart pass the word.”
As Roy slid down the ladder into the store room to open the engine room trap door and drop the metal crane into place, Ned stepped onto the port gallery at the bow of the car, from which station he had an unobstructed view below. Their objective point was in sight. Just before them rose the jagged sky line of New York’s skyscrapers. Where these ended on the south, the spidery arch of the big bridge sprang seaward to drop in the less distinct Brooklyn. In spite of the hot, sunny day, a haze seemed partly to obscure the bridge, their landmark, yet it was toward the center of this, dimly to be seen, that the Flyer was now headed.
To Ned, Alan and Roy, the sensations that come with a flight at a high altitude were not new. But, to Buck and Bob—although the latter had made a few flights,—the experience was a thing to hasten their heartbeats. By this time the airship was gliding ahead on a level keel, its metal humming in the breeze. As Roy got the crane in place, working through the open trap door of the engine room, Buck got a direct view of the earth beneath. It was only salt marshes and winding waterways that he saw but they were enough to show him that he was traveling far faster than any limited train had ever carried him.
“We’re a mile high and the ground’s flyin’ backward!” he gasped to Bob, who sat with his eyes fixed on the signal board, fuel and lubricator gauges.
“Get out on the gallery,” ordered Roy, “and give me more room—it’s crowded here. But stand by to bear a hand when I call you.”
As Buck edged to the cabin door and passed into the gallery, Roy dropped his crane and then threw himself on the floor to get an unobstructed view of the region below. Buck, clinging to the frame of the door, had another full view of the world spreading out beneath. Far in the west the Orange mountains rose in green and gray walls, over the tops of which heavy shadows told of unseen clouds and possible rain.
Cities and towns to the north and south, like pawns upon a giant chessboard, were known only by their clouds of smoke, the glimmer of metal roofs and squatty spires. There was no life and the silver estuaries of the sea, winding snakelike in the green of the salt marshes below, confused the eye. To the east the ribbon of the Hudson glistened in the sun while the great city beyond lost its dull browns and reds in the haze of smoke lying low in the almost breezeless June day.