His trip back to Long Island was a pleasant one. Again he had been equal to the occasion. Once more he had made good. But there was one memory of his recent trip that left a bad taste in his mouth. That was the thought of Rand. On several occasions now he had gotten the better of the fellow. Each time Jimmy had triumphed over him, Rand had made his hatred more evident, had tried meaner tricks to thwart Jimmy. But never before had Rand cursed him at sight or seemed so venomously hostile.
“I’ll have to watch him carefully,” thought Jimmy. “He is vicious enough to do most anything.” And Jimmy was right, as coming events were to prove.
CHAPTER X
Jimmy Visits a Lightship off the Coast
For some time after his flight to Northend Jimmy found life rather tame. No really big stories happened in the eastern part of the country. So Jimmy was occupied from day to day with minor tasks that provided little excitement. Yet all the while he was learning more about his job. From day to day he talked with fellow pilots at the Long Island airport, and drew from them as much as he could in the way of helpful suggestions about flying. For some of them had had extremely trying experiences. Whenever he was with newspaper men Jimmy asked as many questions as he could about reporting and news coverage. He bore in mind what the managing editor had said to him: “If you continue to improve, you’ll make a great reporter some day.” It was Jimmy’s ambition to be one of the very best. So he welcomed every experience that added to his knowledge.
Even when his work seemed tamest he was acquiring facts and knowledge with surprising rapidity; and all that he learned enlarged his background and was just so much preparation for the day when he should truly become a great reporter. One of his assignments was to fly out to an incoming steamer in a seaplane and bring ashore some important news photographs from Europe. It was on this flight that Jimmy had his first sight of a lightship anchored at sea. He was instructed to meet the incoming ship near the Ambrose lightship, off the entrance to the Ambrose Channel that leads from the deep water of the sea up to the New York harbor.
Jimmy knew the approximate hour of the steamship’s arrival at that point. He flew out to sea a little early, to be certain that he was on time. He was to get the pictures when the ship slowed down to pick up the pilot who was to guide her up the channel to her dock. Arrangements had been made by wireless with the photographer, who was aboard the liner. He was to get the pictures down to Jimmy in the seaplane.
When the latter reached the lightship, the ocean liner was not yet in sight. Jimmy decided that he would not fly out to sea to meet her. He was a little distrustful of all this vast stretch of water about him. He had been ordered to meet the ship when she picked up her pilot. The pilot boat was cruising not far away. Jimmy decided that he would come down on the water, which was very calm, and take a look at the lightship. So he flew close to the vessel, then came down in a long glide, and was soon bobbing safely on the gentle swells of the Atlantic.
The lightship was only a few hundred feet distant. Jimmy turned the nose of his plane toward the vessel and taxied to a point close to leeward of it. He had never seen such a curious craft. It was a clumsy, bunty sort of ship, apparently not more than a hundred feet long, with bulging, bulky bow, like that of a Dutch canal-boat. The sides of the vessel were very high for a ship of her length. The ship was a straw color; and painted on her hull in huge letters was the word Ambrose. She had two masts, and at the top of each mast was apparently a guide light, protected by a circular black iron grating, to flash out warning signals in the dark.
Jimmy taxied as close to the ship as he dared. The crew of ten or a dozen men was lined up along the leeward rail, watching him. Apparently the men thought he wished to board the ship, for one of them had a light line in his hand. Seeing that, Jimmy decided he would go aboard. He scanned the sea and saw no sign of an approaching liner. Then he forced his plane a very little closer to the lightship and waited. At once the man with the coil of rope drew back his arm and flung the line straight toward Jimmy. It sped through the air, uncoiling as it flew, and dropped lightly on the fuselage of the plane. Jimmy stepped out on a wing and secured the line. In another moment he had been drawn close up to the ship. A port opened. A sailor skilfully drew one wing up to the side of the ship, holding it so it would not bump the vessel. Jimmy walked out on the wing and climbed aboard the vessel. At once his plane was allowed to drift a few fathoms to leeward, where it was safe.