The carpenter scratched his head, thoughtfully.
“Can’t say I remember any lad of that name. He isn’t one of my pals.”
“He was a carpenter like you,” said Bart Kennedy. “Lived five hundred years ago, and tried to gain liberty for the workingmen of England. An honest rebel, was Jack Cade. Why don’t you fellows learn the spirit of revolt? You’re all as tame as sheep, without the pluck of a louse.”
The collapse of the tent interrupted this dialogue, in which “Bart,” as we called him, endeavored to raise rebellion against the British Constitution.
There was “half a gale,” as seamen would have called it, with the wind at sixty miles an hour, and to the amazement of the spectators, who had given up all hopes of watching a flight that day, an aviator mounted into the fury of the storm. It was Latham, the most dare-devil of the early adventurers of flight, the most passionate and ill-tempered of them. I think it was a kind of rage which made him go up that afternoon. He was “fed up” with waiting for moderate weather, and with the little ladies who surrounded him with adulation and rivalry, as many of those aviators were surrounded by girls who were their hero worshipers and their harpies. It was the most astounding flight that had been seen up to that time. Latham’s machine was like a frail craft in a rough sea. The wind furies shrieked, and tried to tear this thing to pieces. It staggered and strained, and seemed to be tossed like a bit of paper in that wild wind. At times the power of the engine seemed to be exactly equaled by the force of the wind, and it remained aloft, making no progress but shuddering, as it were, until Latham wrenched it round and evaded the direct blast. He flew at a terrific speed, with the wind behind him, rising and dipping with tilted wings, like a sea gull in a storm. The correspondents on the press stand went a little mad at the sight and rose and cheered hoarsely, with a sense of fear, because this man seemed to be courting death. We expected him to crash at any moment. One voice rose above all the others, and roared out words which I have never forgotten. “You splendid fool! Come down! Come down!”
It was Barzini, the Italian correspondent, the most brilliant descriptive writer in the world. Like an Italian of the Medici family, with long nose and olive skin and dark liquid eyes, Latham’s heroic exploit stirred him to a passion of emotion, and tears poured down his face. His description of that flight was one of the finest things I have ever read.
One of the most exciting episodes of those early days of record making was when Graham White competed with Paulhan in a race from London to Manchester. With Ernest Perris, the news editor of The Daily Chronicle, and Rowan, one of the correspondents, I set out in a powerful motor car to follow the flight, which began shortly before dark. Graham White’s plan was to fly by night—the first time such an exploit had been attempted—and he thought that our headlights might help as some guide outside London. We lost him almost at once, and after a wild motor ride at a breakneck pace in the darkness, decided that we should never see him again. He had probably hit a tree, and was lying dead in some field. Many other correspondents had motored out, but we lost them all, and halted at the side of a lonely road where we heard voices shouting to each other in French.
“Perhaps they are Graham White’s mechanics,” I said to Perris.
This guess proved to be right, and upon inquiry from the men, we found that Graham White had had engine trouble, and had alighted in some garden not far from where we stood.