There stood at the upper end of the big field two strong, permanent upright posts, with a horizontal bar fastened to them about eight feet above the ground. At one time it had been used for the purposes of winding cable. Jumping and catching this lateral bar, Fred began twirling about it with such speed that his body looked most like the rapidly-revolving blade of a propeller.
Then, when he was going so rapidly that it did not seem that he possibly could know his exact and instantaneous position, he suddenly let go, and, to the gasps of the men who were looking on, shot off through the air at a horizontal tangent.
Swift as an arrow his body hurtled through space. Thirty feet away he landed, feet up, as though he had taken but an ordinary broad-jump.
"Bravo!" came surprised and wondering shouts.
"Measure it," said Fred, quietly, joining the others.
They did. "Thirty-three feet," announced Dr. Vorhees, "and I'd call it some stunt."
It was nearing sunset when the final contests of this novel field day were brought to a conclusion, but every man who had participated in it, with the exception of Henryson, felt a hundredfold better for the physical exertions they had been through. It proved to be a mental as well as a physical tonic.
But final events, as proved later, turned out to be most significant.
It was long after dark when the four young men, returning to their hut from that of another crew, were brought to a sudden halt a hundred feet away from their own hangar.
"What's that?" Big Jack had whispered, at the same time attracting the attention of the other three to a form barely discernible in the night, as it skulked along in the dense shadow of the big building.