“Got it out of his head—and from watching birds fly, too, I reckon,” said Uncle Tel. “That boy, he’s always snatching time to sit out here on the top of old Hogback Hill, watching buzzards sail, crows flap, and how the lark gives a little spring when she sails up into the sky. Looky here, see that sort of spring, set there where the glider rests on its skid? That’s what Buddy calls his ‘lark spring up.’ It helps him get gliding in a shorter run than he could before he put it there.”
The glider and its escort had about reached the crest of the hill now. Raynor stepped a little apart and stood looking down over the lay of the land below him.
“Um—valleys and bare rolling hills,” he muttered to himself. “The sort of terrain below to make air currents that rise and flow. The kid’s a good picker of gliding country. Reckon though he’s been experimenting and studying out this air current business for himself. He’s not exactly the kind to leave everything to mere blind chance.”
Hal Dane jammed his old cap down on his head nearly to the ears, stood a moment beside his glider. He was a tall, fair boy—fair at least if he hadn’t been so outrageously tanned. His eyes had the Norse hint of “blue fire” to them, like the blue fire of the ice glint of the far north. For a fact, the boy had more than a hint of the old Norse Viking look to him as he stood there beside his wind ship.
His mother, in the fore-edge of the crowd, hands nervously twisting but chin up and eyes steady, might have been the mother of a Viking. Only, instead of watching a son take boat for unknown sea currents, this mother was watching a son mount the even more unknown air currents.
Ducking down to get in under the overhanging wing, Hal seated himself on the board, rammed his back against the upright post that formed the main member of his skeleton fuselage, then doubled up his long legs to set feet on the pair of pedals.
It was rather good sport, this starting Hal off on a flight. The Hillton youngsters had plenty of experience in their end of the matter—which was the pushing and pulling off. On this occasion, when there were so many onlookers, it was a matter to be fought over. Fuz McGinnis, acting as master of ground ceremonies, straightened affairs out and selected those that had already had some experience in pulling off.
At a signal from Hal, half a dozen fellows, three to the left and three to the right, walked away with the ends of a rope that led back in a “V” to the front of the wind bird. At the tip of one wing a tall boy trotted along to hold the wings level. Behind the wind bird, Fuz and another fellow came ambling along, pulling back slightly on a tail rope.
At twenty steps down the hill, Hal shouted, “Run!”
The contraption, which had been slipping along the ground on its keel skid, rose a few feet as the runners picked up speed.