“I hate to think what it would mean, boys,” said the scoutmaster, earnestly. “Try it down the slope all you want to, but don’t go nearer than this to the precipice. If one of you should by any chance go over, you’d crash down a hundred feet.”
“We wouldn’t think of trying a glide off there,” laughed Vinton. “At least, not for mine.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said the doctor. “You’re not fools enough for that. But what I mean is, don’t back up that far to take a runner. You see, while you’re facing down into the wind, if a sudden gust should come, you can never tell, you know, it might catch the machine a certain way and topple you right down. You’ve got a good long slope here. Don’t go nearer than this now, will you?”
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” said Mac.
“Well, I want you all to promise me. I’ve got to go down now and make up a report for the local council, and I want to be able to banish this from my mind. Do you all promise? Do you promise, Harry?”
“Why me, in particular?” Harry laughed.
“No reason, only I happened to notice you standing there.”
Harry stood among the others, his hands in his pockets. “Of course, I promise,” said he.
Red Deer watched the first flight. It carried Carpenter, the Hawks’ patrol leader, over one hundred feet down the slope, skimming the ground. Then the scoutmaster, apparently satisfied, went down to his tent. Presently, Nelson Pierce literally leaped into fame. He had been watching the manipulations of the others shrewdly, and now, with the benefit of what he had seen and a theory or two of his own, he took a good run and, balancing carefully, brought the forward edges up to a sharp angle. The downward slope of the hill and the upward coasting of the glider soon left at least thirty feet of space below him.
“Oh me, oh my!” shouted Howard Brent, as they ran down to be in at the finish.