During July Billy worked prodigiously. It was unreasonably hot, and the engineering section, which Billy directed, got the reaction in the shape of an endless procession of stricken motors.
The post was overrun, too, with visiting officers of every clan and nation of the army—officers of the line, officers of the staff, officers of the quartermaster and ordnance and signal corps, officers of the reserve, shavetails of the National Guard, and even a detachment of cadets from the Academy—most of them detailed to look on and grow wise, some of them detailed for technical work, but all of them crowding, elbowing and clamoring for a taste of the air.
And Billy did his bit with the rest of the post to satisfy them—so much so that five hours of grueling work with the stick, in heavy DH’s, with the air a bedlam of cross-chopping heat bumps to make it more interesting, was an average component of his routine day. This, you understand, “in addition to his other duties” with the engineering section.
His working day started on the flying line an hour before reveille and ended, as a rule, in the repair shop, any number of hours after tattoo. He might have side-stepped the flying, in his capacity of engineer, but he would not. He knew that the ground lubber who has once made a flight talks about it with expansive enthusiasm for the rest of his life. And he made it his job to see that no ground lubber left Langstrom Field without a mouthful of nice things to say about the air. Smooth ladylike flights he gave them, ironing out the heat bumps to the limit of his ability with deft twitches of the stick, wheeling ponderously around the turns, emphasizing the ease and simplicity of flight, minimizing the intricacy and hazard.
“Propaganda hopping,” he called it.
In one sense he welcomed the heavy program. It kept him too busy and too tired to dwell on the tantalizing weeks that stretched drearily ahead between him and the dazzling goal of October. But the grind told on him heavily. Only his burning enthusiasm for the advancement of the flying idea kept him at it. No other pilot on the field—and there were other enthusiasts at Langstrom that summer—could have equaled the pace he set. The groundsman has no conception of what air fatigue can do in a few hours. Cobb grew lean and gray. The change was gradual but by August it had become distinctly noticeable.
And Jennie, watching him jealously, protested at last.
“Billy,” she chided one steaming evening when, for a miracle, he had escaped the slavery of the shop—or rather repudiated it out of sheer weariness—“you are a wreck! I suppose you’ve got to keep the Liberties turning up but you might let down a little on the propaganda hops. Are they necessary, so many of them?”
“I think they are. Aviation is in a bad way, Jennie. You know that. It’s crash, crash, crash, the way these barnstormers at the summer resorts and half-winged kiwis on some of the army posts handle ships. We don’t crash on this field. Not since the colonel came and weeded out the duds, God bless him. We don’t joy hop. We really do aviate. And the more of it we do, the better for the general average, don’t you see? Why, we’ve scored a hundred hours a day with only thirty ships active since July first. And not a shock absorber sprained yet, excepting by some of these outside birds from the reserve and the guard. That’s something to shout about. That’s what makes the ground grippers take heart. It’s the sort of thing we’re doing here this summer that makes the good name of aviation, in the long run—not speed records and cross-continent flights. It’s the good work, Jennie, and we’ve got to keep it up—keep it up till the last crash!”
Jennie drew a quick breath.