SHAPING A NEW COURSE
The program planned for the next six days was a full one. It was complicated somewhat by the fact that Ned left for Chicago a day later and was gone from Saturday morning till Monday morning, making a stay in the western city of five hours. That this was not a business trip was indicated by the fact that he did not visit the local office of the Universal Transportation Company. Mr. Napier and Mary Hope rode to the depot with Ned when he boarded the Sunday afternoon Limited. His last words to them were: “All right, I promise. We can’t possibly put this thing off. But when we get back I bring Alan home and we’ll all take a good long vacation and go somewhere—not in an airship.”
The Herald editor examined the Ocean Flyer Thursday, June 15. When he left in the motor car that evening, he took Buck Stewart with him, the arrangement being that the latter was to return the next morning and from that time do all he could to help the busy young men. One specific duty was to stand guard over the new airship as an additional precaution against unexpected and undesired publicity.
Thursday evening, much to Buck’s regret, Ned and Alan made a late-hour experimental flight, the company calculator having arrived. While the Airship Boys, assisted by Roy Osborne, who was now formally booked as a member of the crew, made speedy flights in all directions, even venturing out to sea again for a short distance, the engineer was busy in the “weather” tower of the plant. This important part of the works was a fifty foot tower rising from a flat-roofed corner of the setting-up room. Instruments in the tower automatically recorded wind direction, duration and force. From the roof below, kite experiments were also frequently in progress. From these, important meteorological tables were made. Small captive balloons might also be seen anchored from this roof at nearly all hours. On several occasions, the kites had been sent up 19,000 feet by use of metal cables and power-driven drums. The engineer’s work in the night tests was to elevate small balloons to the level of the Flyer in flight and get exact data on the wind pressure. From this and the anemometer variations recorded on the flying aeroplane, it was possible to estimate the actual advance of the airship under all aerometer readings.
Thursday night, Alan acted as engineer. Roy Osborne took the observer’s post and Bob was in charge of the wireless. This was located in the after part of the store room on the lower deck. The antennae of the outfit followed the cables bracing the wing planes. But these, it was decided, were to be altered and rigged on masts erected on the top deck and tail truss.
The Airship Boys had been living in a private hotel. Before retiring that night, future accommodations had also been provided for Buck. When Ned awoke the next morning, a fuller significance of what had happened in the previous twenty-four hours seemed to present itself to the boy. He threw open the door of Alan’s adjoining room.
He began by announcing that he meant to go to Chicago the next day and would be gone over Sunday. There was a time when Alan would have answered this statement with some facetious inquiry about his sister Mary. But that time had passed. “Got anything else on your mind?” was his only reply.
“Several things,” responded Ned. “We haven’t told the Herald yet about the London supply of gasoline and ether.”
“It’s ‘petrol’ over there,” explained Alan. “Don’t you reckon they’ve plenty of each?”
“Sure,” answered Ned a little contemptuously. “But we’re goin’ to be there less than an hour. We ain’t goin’ to have time to go out shoppin’ for our fuel. And how are you goin’ to take over half a ton of ‘petrol’ on board? In quart cups? There must be a good supply of it and there must be some sort of hose and pump.”