“Where were you?”
“On the roof.”
“You’re doing very well. Good stuff,” was his superior’s comment. “Get it in a column.”
There wasn’t a great deal that the young reporter could write of the actual flight. The ship-like structure had been wheeled out of the gloom of the canvas-sided setting-up room into the yellow glare of half a dozen yard torches. It rumbled heavily—more like a heavy truck than the flimsy airships Stewart had seen. Then, for some minutes, several persons had passed back and forth by means of a step ladder into an enclosed part of the great, metallic-glinting structure. From the lights that flared up and died out in the big torches he knew that his first night’s vigil was to be rewarded with something.
“At ten fifteen o’clock,” he described in his story, “only a vast expanse of metal, cables and truss could be seen vaguely as those busy about the towering superstructure moved a torch or climbed into or out of the mammoth enclosed frame. Just before ten twenty o’clock an engine started suddenly somewhere within the ship-like body of the winged wonder. A little later, a brief burst of light within the central enclosure threw into sudden view two rows of flashing portholes. Like the bow of a miniature ocean steamer, the front of the shadowy structure stood, for a moment, clearly defined in the night.
“Halfway up the side of the vessel extended a railing-protected gallery that indicated two decks. Along the lower of these ran a second gallery. The forward part of the upper deck was plainly a pilot house, from the rounded front of which, through two small heavily glassed openings, shot antennaelike feelers of light into the black factory yard. Behind this section the skeletonlike gallery led astern along what were apparently three more rooms. Passing these, the gallery ascended the rounded side of the giant car and disappeared sternward in the form of a protected path or bridge. The front of the lower deck resembled the dark hold of a freight vessel. In the rear, a door opening from this gallery revealed, through a glare of light, an engine room, now the center of much activity.
“Herein two young men hung over a puzzle of levers, wheels and valves while a third was just climbing into the gallery by means of a drop ladder or landing stage.
“‘What’s the use of all this illumination?’ called the young man just mounting the machine. ‘Why not send out cards?’ he added, laughing.
“One of the boys in the engine room stuck his head outside, glanced about and chuckled. As he disappeared within again, there was a snap and the lights outlining the air machine turned black. Then came the renewed sound of feet hurrying back and forth on metal runways; doors opened and closed and, where deck lights had flooded the strange craft, only the thin rays of electric hand torches indicated persons moving about. One of several men on the ground below now made his way up the ladder to the landing stage and by this to the lower deck gallery, where two of the moving lights were suddenly focussed. Words passed in low tones and, in a few moments, the glow of a green-shaded light appeared through the suddenly reopened door of the pilot house.
“Almost at the same time, but from the distant offices of the aeroplane factory, broke out the staccato of a wireless sender in operation. Those on the lower gallery waited in silence until a voice called from the pilot house: