Five minutes later with their strange, air-burning motor hitting hard on every cylinder, the boys, with their pilot, felt themselves being lifted high into the bluest of blue skies that so often smile down upon the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky.
To the inexperienced person it is impossible to judge the speed with which an airplane travels. With no trees, no telephone poles, no nothing speeding past him, he is likely to think of himself standing still in mid-air. Not so Johnny Thompson. He had ridden in many planes and under every possible condition. He had come to have a sort of sixth sense. This was a feeling for speed. As he now sped through the air he became wildly excited for he was, he knew, travelling faster than ever before.
“It’s the fuel,” he told himself. “Liquid air and carbon.” Stealing a glance over the pilot’s shoulder, he watched with amazement as the speed indicator rose from two hundred to two-fifty, then to three hundred.
“With a little tail wind, we’d beat the clock,” he chuckled. “Be there before we know it.”
They were, but not until Johnny had time for a few serious thoughts about tomorrow’s game. That game meant a great deal. For Hillcrest it meant a final triumph over an ancient rival. All the old grads would be there. Some had wired for reserve seats from a distance of a thousand miles. Some, like himself, were to come by plane. Johnny thrilled at the thought.
He closed his eyes for a moment and into his mind’s vision there floated the “Crimson Flood,” the team: Stagger Weed, Tony Blazes, Jack Rabbit Jones, Artie Stark, Punch Dickman—all marched before him. And after that, most important of all, Red Dynamite and Old Kentucky. “Good Old Dynamite!” he whispered. “And Kentucky! They must win! They—”
But what was this? Had something gone wrong with the motor? A chill set him shuddering. They were circling for a landing.
Then he laughed. Seizing Kentucky’s hand, he gripped it hard. “We’re here!” he shouted. “Kentucky, we are here! The emergency landing a mile from Hillcrest is right beneath us.” And so it was. They had come with the speed of the wind, no ordinary wind either, the speed of a whirlwind.
Fast as they had come, the news of their strange and daring flight with a new and little-tried motor had preceded them. Johnny’s message had come through. A crowd had gathered to see them land. In that crowd were reporters and camera men. Their pictures would be in all the morning papers. Johnny, Kentucky, and the inventor of this new motor would be there. All this would be grand publicity for the inventor and his motor. It would help to swell the crowd at tomorrow’s game. Johnny was glad.