The Airship Boys' Ocean Flyer; Or, New York to London in Twelve Hours

by H. L. Sayler

Alan made no reply, as these marks were not yet distinguishable by the naked eye. Yet he headed toward the craft in the middle of the river.

“I got her,” he exclaimed at last, giving the signal of caution through the tube at this time and beginning to decrease his speed. “She’s headin’ with us. Make out any one aboard?”

“Quite a bunch,” reported Ned without lowering his glasses. “Most of ’em on the roof of the engine house. There are two persons well aft standing by the hawser run in the stern.”

“Better come in and catch the time we pass the Battery,” suggested Alan and from that time he gave no more heed to his companion. Ned saw that the powerful ocean tug had already advanced some distance up the river. This made no difference in their plans so far as the catching of the cargo was concerned. But it did in another way, for their calculations for time and their latitude and longitude made the Battery their real starting point. In a moment he was at Alan’s side with the chronometer before him and his eyes looking through the port door.

Captain Ned knew that the tug was rising and falling just ahead and stern on. He had seen the black-hulled Herald despatch boat veer off as if for a better view of what was to come. He thought he made out the figures of Major Honeywell and the managing editor standing apart in the stern. Then, like the painted panorama he had once seen of “Departure from New York harbor,” the old, round, familiar Battery in its little setting of green flashed into view.

“Two, twenty-one, seventeen,” exclaimed Ned and once more he disappeared through the starboard door. All was now so plain that Ned almost shrank back. As if shooting at a target, Alan held the airship directly on the rapidly expanding mark. One less familiar with the young aviator’s skill could have seen nothing but disaster ahead. In a constantly lowering curve the Ocean Flyer seemed doomed to an inevitable collision.

There was a frightened scurrying on the tug. Those on the engine room roof were scrambling to the deck. The two men in the stern were waving their arms. But the cool-headed pilot had no eyes for these. Between two slender spars hung the rubber encased package of matrices that twenty-one minutes and seventeen seconds before, had come hot and steaming from the stereotyping room of the Evening Telegram. It was Alan’s business to pick up these paper forms and in seventeen hours carry them to the heart of London on the other side of the world.

The skill with which he laid his nerveless hand to this task meant the possibility of success or immediate disaster. To fail in his course by inches meant the wreck of all their cherished hopes and possibly the death of five persons. To Ned, on the gallery without, peering downward and crouching forward as rigid as bronze, the strain was no less. And yet, he remained silent. What one could do, two might not. Nothing of his own skill was missing in Alan. He rested his own fate, that of his companions and that of the great machine, in the hands of Alan and waited.

At the precise moment when the still rapidly moving airship seemed about to drop into the spray of the choppy waves—when, in fact, the lowered arm of Roy’s crane had already touched the water—there was a sudden movement for which only Ned and Roy were prepared. As Bob stumbled against the signal box and Buck’s weakened legs gave way beneath him, the propellers shot into high speed and the chug of the compressed air valves told that the big planes had been altered violently. There was only the hint of a check in the downward sweep of the aeroplane and as a din of cheers sounded ahead the birdlike Flyer sprang forward on a new course.

Alan, driving the ship, could not see at the moment of contact the object he was to pick up. Nor was Ned able to keep his eye on the waiting package. Roy alone of those on the aeroplane was in a position first to detect success or failure. From the instant the hurtling machine jumped on its upward course the tug and its masts disappeared from Alan’s sight. But all this was carefully calculated. It was easier to clear the tug’s masts with a lifting tail-piece than it was to avoid them on a downward swoop. But, more important, the checking of the swift flight for a moment put the aeroplane over the tug masts at a lessened speed.