“That ain’t any part o’ my job, is it?” gasped the astonished young mechanic.
“Not till you see her,” answered Bob laughing. “And then you’ll be beggin’ for a ride.”
[CHAPTER XIV]
THE ANCLOTE MAKES A FLIGHT
Even now the Anclote, as the Boy Aeronauts’ Club aeroplane soon came to be known, may be considered old-fashioned. But when Bob Balfour and Tom Allen bought her and shipped her to the scene of her first flight over the orange groves, palm trees and limitless swamps of mid-Florida, the Anclote represented the best ideas of not less than three of the most practical and scientific of the first aviators. These, of course, were the Wright Brothers, Curtiss and Farman.
The motor was a Curtiss 25-horsepower, with 1400 revolutions per minute, while the propellers were exact copies of Farman’s, with a spread of 7½ feet. The guiding rudders were patterned after the well-tested form used by the Wrights—the forward or vertical one 15½ feet long by 3 feet wide, while the two horizontal guides in the rear were 5½ feet high by 1 foot wide. The entire length of the planes was 38 feet 4 inches, while the sections connecting the two planes were 6 feet deep and 5 feet high.
The rubber-faced silk plane surfaces were attached in the manner of the Curtiss machine, stretched over laminated spruce ribs, at intervals of a little over a foot and then wrapped around the front cross bars of the wing frames and kept taut at the rear by wire edgings drawn tight over each rib end.
Instead of landing and starting skids as used on the Wright machine, Type No. 1 carried a running gear of four light pneumatic tired wheels mounted in ordinary bicycle forks. A spoon brake applied by a bamboo plunger to the tire of the front wheels permitted quick stopping after alighting and held the machine for the start.
Thursday evening, Bob worked until a late hour, sending Gabe home for his supper, and awaiting his return. When the tired boy reached the hotel, he found a message that at once dispelled his fatigue—Captain Joe had reached port with the Three Sisters, and he had left word where he could be found.