It might seem that young Dane was a daredevil fool risking both his neck and his plane in a useless show-off. But the group watching from the Rand-Elwin field knew there was a purpose and a real reason behind every one of these stunts. Hal Dane had been sent up to demonstrate that the Rand-Elwin School prepared its flyers to face practically every known emergency. Deliberately Hal Dane had forced his ship into spins and stalls that many a pilot would have come out of—in a casket and with a lily in his hand. Instead, with the stored-up skill bought of splendid teaching and relentless practice, the boy rolled or whipped or glided out of every danger.
Dropping out of freak flying into a series of long, swooping curves, Hal descended toward the field and made a landing so gently that he would hardly have jarred a glass of water on a dinner table.
Other flyers went up. There were planes all over the sky, outdoing themselves in loops and spins and whirls.
This was a big day at the Rand-Elwin field. Colonel Bob Wiljohn, a man of immense wealth and interested in the future of aviation, was a guest of the school. As part owner in the Wiljohn Airplane factories, at Axion, he was acting as representative of his firm in a search for young pilots of sufficient training and capability to handle their makes of planes as demonstrators. It was a compliment to an air school to have a man like Colonel Wiljohn inspect its student ranks in search of men for his aviation program.
After lunch and an inspection of equipment, rooms and hangars, the Colonel and his constant companion, his grandson Jacky Wiljohn, were out on the field again.
Colonel Wiljohn was a tall, muscular man, with a look of youth in his keen gray eyes despite the lines on his tanned face and his white hair. The type of man that kept young by his intense interest in big things and the future trend of affairs. Jacky, his grandson, was getting aviation in the blood at an early age. The little fellow with his close-clipped hair and wide-open black eyes, must have been only five or thereabouts, yet he could speak familiarly of water-cooled engine, and struts, and spar, and other lingo of aircraft.
The Colonel was not only a builder of planes, but also a flyer of some note. It was natural that he should want to view the Rand-Elwin field from the air as well as from the ground.
Hal could see one of the big, new trimotors being trundled out for his use. A pilot in helmet and flying clothes warmed her up and slid under the controls. Hal’s eyes widened. It was Fuz—Fuz McGinnis that was to take her up. Some honor for the old boy! He’d liked to have been in Fuz’s boots himself. But Fuz deserved it; he was a crack airman, that boy.
Colonel Wiljohn and Jacky, the youngster grinning happily over his miniature aviation togs, were already aboard.
Down the runway came the plane, maneuvered some slight obstruction, then gathered speed and soared into the air like a great bird of the skies.