“‘Don’t forget your lights!’ yelled the figure on the gallery as the airship swept upward, ‘and keep the wireless goin’.’ While he was speaking the swift propellers had already carried the car beyond hearing.”
CHAPTER III
THE VETERAN TAKES OFF HIS HAT TO THE CUB
The rest of reporter Stewart’s story of the mysterious airship flight, together with his elaborate account of the construction of the aeroplane as it had been described to him, ran much over a column. Old Dick, the copy reader, groaned and even Mr. Latimer began to wonder how he was to get his “beat” into two columns without “killing” Chamber’s “talk” with Colonel Grant, Winton’s account of the Airship Boys or Glidden’s “lead.”
The latter Mr. Latimer had already thrown out conditionally but he was determined to use the interview and the account of the earlier adventures of the daring boys. There could be only one solution of the difficulty: he must have more space if he had to choke it out of the night editor. Meanwhile, he began to put some pressure on the wordy reporter.
“It’s good stuff, old man,” he said to the perspiring reporter as the latter pounded his typewriter, “but you know this isn’t a magazine and other things have happened to-night.”
Stewart was only a beginner. As yet he knew only a part of a reporter’s trade. He could write but he hadn’t learned how to tell it in a “stick.” The editorial admonition fell on him with little effect. He seemed unable to omit any detail. Page after page came from his machine to tell how for twenty-five minutes the four or five men in the Aeroplane Company yards waited for the return of the flying car.
He told how a movable searchlight was stationed at the landing place and how the watchers then betook themselves to the wireless office of the works. With good judgment he refrained from telling how he concealed himself just without an open window, and one reading his narrative might conclude that the prying reporter was a guest of the watchful group.
Some of the messages from the moving aeroplane he heard and of these he told. Most of them he missed, as his vantage point was somewhat removed. He could tell that the busy wireless operator was in almost constant communication with “Bob” on the airship. But the most important message he did hear, because when it came the excited operator repeated it as if reading a bulletin to anxious thousands.
“On board Ocean Flyer,” he read, “10.24 P. M. Estimate forty miles from Newark at sea. Big steamer beneath. Turning. Better time returning. Look out. Bob Russell.”