“This is something like what I’d need.” He laid the model in Colonel Wiljohn’s hands. “Body cut down to its slenderest, a greater stretch of wing for speed, but part of the wing interior could be used for storage purposes to carry emergency rations, a still to condense water, extra fuel. I’ve got a lighter engine in mind too, and higher-powered fuel than any of the rest used.”
For the better part of the night, Hal Dane and Colonel Wiljohn clashed verbal swords over the boy’s proposed ocean flight.
No matter how well prepared for, it was a wild undertaking. The Colonel pleaded for this young flyer whom he had come to love as his own kin to stay on in America, to put his talents to work for aviation safety, not for aviation madness of ocean flights.
But the call of the winds was in Hal Dane’s blood. Even as his ancestors in frail boats rode the currents of the sea to seek a far continent, so was the Norse blood in his veins urging him on to ride the rivers of the wind on some far exploration.
In the end, Colonel Wiljohn gave down before Hal Dane’s adamant decision.
“Boy,” he said, “you win! Fly the safety model for me at the Onheim Contest, and I’ll build you the finest plane ever sent out on an ocean flight—but I fear that ocean flight like death.”
CHAPTER XVI
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
“Boy, you can say ‘Excuse my clouds!’ when you ride that thing, eh?” John Weldon, master mechanic at the Wiljohn Works, stepped back to gaze at the strange-looking, long-winged monoplane that was under construction.
“And I hope I can say ‘Excuse my fog!’ too.” Hal Dane lovingly touched the aeronautical board of the plane whereon were featured the newest devices to safeguard fog flying.
In the place of trusting to any natural horizon that snow and thick weather all too easily obliterate, there was set in Hal Dane’s ship an “artificial horizon.” This was not so immense as it might sound, but was merely a small instrument that indicated longitudinal and lateral position with relation to the ground at all times. Another innovation was the sensitive barometric altimeter so delicate as to measure the altitude of the airplane within a few feet of the ground.