“Not at all, there’s an empty seat, if you’re not afraid.”
“Not much,” laughed Harry. “I’d have come a long way for this chance.”
“We haven’t got much air to stand on,” said Mr. Goodwin. “We’ll have to speed a bit, I think.”
“We won’t get arrested for speeding, anyway,” suggested Harry.
“True enough,” laughed the aviator, as he went about his machine, trying the wire bracing as one tries the strings of a harp. “If there’s anything you want to know, my boy, just fire away. These reporters have got me worked up so I’m a regular ‘Questions and Answers Column’ in a newspaper. Now’s your chance—any posers?” He glanced whimsically at Harry, who was already absorbed in an inspection of the graceful medley of wing and wire and polished struts.
The machine was a biplane of forty-two feet lateral extent, with forward stability planes similar to the Wright model. Instead of the tips of the main planes being flexible, however, which is a chief feature of the famous Wright machine, the lateral stability of the craft was controlled by hinged wings, midway between the upper and lower planes at each extremity, more after the fashion of the Van Anden device. Harry noticed the curve of the main planes, for he had heard that here lay one of the elusive secrets of aviation and a rule which would apply as well to a boy’s model as to a man-carrying craft. The cross-ribs rose rather abruptly from the front an inch or more above the forward horizontal framing, then curved evenly back. The curve of the canvas was not the arc of a circle at all, but a sort of humpback shape, cleverly designed to catch the air in front, imprison it for the fraction of a second, and pour it slowly out under the rear to make room for more. Many a stick had been steamed and bent and dried and thrown away before that ugly, but efficient, curve had been decided on.
“I must see that Pen has his planes flexed right if we have to go out and harpoon a whale to get the whalebone,” thought Harry.
The strength and perfect rigidity of the machine were obtained by a multiplicity of wire braces running in every direction. There was some good reason for the presence of every stick and brace, for every little curve or turn. Even the canvas was laid on diagonally for the bracing effect it might have. And though the machine looked simple, considering its great responsibility, Harry could well believe that every detail of it was the result of years of study and experiment.
For the aeroplane is not a discovery, nor an invention, either, in the ordinary sense, but the combined application and the nice adjustment of a dozen worked-out principles and a hundred ingenious devices for riding the baffling and unstable air currents. Every jut and turn, every little projection, every eccentric form of wing or plane or rudder, had its scientific explanation. Yet most boys who see an aeroplane think they can go and build one. But the money which is often expended for wood and tools might better be used to purchase books containing the rudimentary facts, a knowledge of which has made the conquest of the air possible and goes far to make it safe.
Two seats, side by side, were cozily placed in the center between the upper and lower planes, with the control device near at hand, and thus every movement that a bird makes,—the flex of wing, the flap of tail, the guiding tendency of this or that little stir of throat and body,—was at the command of the operator. The telescope, the first tool of aviation, had forced the swallow and the sea-gull to yield up their secret, and here it was amid a network of frame and wire, at the service of man.