“I’d think you’d have a net, like those on street cars,” suggested Buck.
“When you can tell us how to use a net without danger of knocking your freight farther from you, we’ll be glad to try it,” answered Roy.
“You can’t pick up a passenger with it, can you?” went on Buck, who was desperately trying to make conversation.
“No,” answered Roy, “and I don’t know any way to take on and land passengers when trains are going sixty miles an hour.”
When some one commented on the absence of Major Honeywell from the luncheon it was soon explained that he would be on the Herald tug, preferring to get the latest possible view of the departing Flyer. At half past one o’clock Mr. Atkinson’s telephone called Ned. It was the Herald editor who only wished to give the voyageurs good luck, to ask if everything was ready and to announce that the program of the Telegram would be carried out on the minute.
“You have the Herald code book,” were his parting words. “Try to send me advices from Ipswich and Nova Scotia if you can. In London, the Herald representatives will look after your arrival. Don’t bother about anything but getting safely across and back. You have the best wishes of the Herald. Good-bye and good luck.”
Ned and those about him did not know that the great editor, as he hung up his receiver, sighed and for a moment leaned his head in his hand. The journalist realized that he was sending five young men on a mission in which there were overpowering odds of death unnoted in time and unmarked in place. Then he thought of the time when, as a young reporter, he rode six days with the thermometer forty below zero to interview Sitting Bull, and he was an editor again.
Since it had also been decided that the Telegram as printed in London was to contain matter describing the Ocean Flyer and a brief “advance” story of its plan of flight, it was accepted as inevitable that these details would return to all American newspapers in time for publication the same morning that the Herald printed its own elaborate account. It was planned, therefore, that the Herald was to arrange to publish a much fuller and better story by using, in addition to the story in hand, the log of the Flyer for the description of the actual flight, and to augment this by adding the particulars of the start in Newark as well as a graphic account of what took place while the aeroplane was in London.
This accounted in part for Mr. Latimer’s presence at the luncheon. He had assigned himself the duty of preparing the story of the start. He had also another mission. While making his first inspection of the aircraft that morning he had arranged with Bob Russell for a lively account of both flights to be ready on the return and to be delivered with the great coronation story.
“I ain’t puttin’ anybody’s nose out of joint, am I?” asked Bob at once when first approached on this subject.