Hal had to undergo examination for heart action, and short-sightedness, and color blindness, and sense of balance and equilibrium. He was thumped and spun and eye-tested till he began to imagine that he really must have some outlandish physical defects. It came as an exhilarating shock to him when the doctor thumped him in the back and grunted, “Umph,—prime condition,—fellow with a constitution like that could fly to the moon!”
So Hal was turned over to Major Weston for training in the elementary principles of flying.
In relief at his acceptance, Hal’s hopes flew high.
But hopes were all that flew high. Hal Dane in person was kept pretty low, smudging at a lot of engine junk that didn’t look like it was ever meant to fit together.
To Instructor Weston aviation was neither a sport nor an experiment. It was a business. Under him a student was taught an aerial groundwork as solid as a railroad rock bed.
Since the internal-combustion gasoline engine was the accepted, standardized motor power for aircraft flight, Major Weston saw to it that his pupils knew internal-combustion gasoline engines—else they didn’t graduate into the next class.
For Hal, the lessons seemed to go on interminably about the valve, the piston, ignition, spark, carburetor. He endured all the miseries of a brilliant pianist given to performing by “ear” who is set down in a primer class to learn note reading and scales. He began to feel that the outside of the ship, wing beauty, pull of propeller, soaring power, were what had fascinated him—not greasy, grimy intricacies of engines. In fact, heretofore engines had not entered very much into his aerial plans. He had known how to crank them, and fly them, and that had seemed enough.
But at Rand-Elwin, engines loomed large.
He had been here for weeks, and so far had not been allowed even the feel of a ship—except the Puddle Duck, and one couldn’t call that a ship.
The Puddle Duck was an atrocity. It was a stubby, short-winged boat with no more grace of movement than the land-waddle of that barnyard fowl for which it had been named. The chunky plane, for all its ridiculous wing effect, was merely a land ship. In it, pupils studying balance taxied madly across the turf, striving to keep its misshapen body at proper angle—an impossibility. How could one keep such an unbalanced blob balanced?