Work so engrossed Hal Dane that the time seemed to slip away before he knew it. Here it was April. A few more weeks would usher in May and the great Onheim Safety Device Contest Hal was more than anxious to get the Onheim Contest behind him. For after he had flown the gyroscope in that test, he would feel that he had fulfilled his obligation to his staunch friend, Colonel Wiljohn,—would feel free to undertake his heart’s dream, the Pacific flight.
Clutching at Hal Dane’s heart was the black fear that some other aviator would beat him to that conquest of the Pacific in the great non-stop flight.
Mr. Vallant’s recent offer of an additional ten thousand dollars was stirring vast interest in the Pacific Ocean flight. Flyers everywhere were awakening to the fact that they had let the huge Vallant Prize go unclaimed long enough. From across the Pacific, word came that Sugeroto, that small, lithe Japanese aeronaut of princely birth, was warming up a plane for the flight. Two American aces in a great trimotor were testing out their plane with the same prize in view. Some ten other aviators were also reported as planning to get in the Cross-the-Pacific flight.
From his latest expedition into the airways above the western coast, Hal returned with jubilation in his heart. Even in the old model test plane he had taken out, he had ridden far and fast on a swift and mighty wind river high above the California sea edge. Young Dane was wild to be off in his own wide-winged speed plane, skimming this airpath on his viking journey across the western ocean before so much multiple competition achieved the goal ahead of him.
But back at Axion, at the Wiljohn factories, Hal Dane, instead of coming to his Wind Bird completed for its try-out, found work everywhere disorganized. The two near-finished planes that he had expected to test in two such different flights, were left perched on their skids with no hands patiently, carefully building them on to their perfection.
Over radio had been flashed the news that the whole Three-River district of south Alabama was under water, that hundreds of square miles of territory were swept by raging floods.
And Jacky Wiljohn, gone south with his mother for the winter and early spring at a resort, was in that flood country.
The danger to his beloved idol swept away from Colonel Wiljohn’s mind every plan for air-conquest and glory of prize-winning air models.
To Colonel Bob Wiljohn, aviators now had but one reason for existence—aviators could act as eyes for the vast rescue army that was fighting the floods. Aviators could fly over the torrents to search out the men, women and children clinging to such land heights not yet reached by the floods! Aviators could rescue families huddled on their home roofs that tumbled and tossed in the muddy currents!
The pick of planes and men from the Wiljohn Works went south for the rescue work.