The motor was of about the same sort as the Hustle’s great Kulnoch, and by noon he felt that he could handle the machine in a respectable, honest wind that would not try to play tag with him. He said as much to Lieutenant Adeler, but that officer was as cautious as he was brave.
After lunch, at a country-club near the aerodrome, the three strolled back to the Paulhan-Tatin again. The mechanics wheeled it out of its aerodrome. Hike crawled into it, and sat there, idly.
Suddenly there was the buzz of a motor starting, and a Modified Jolls Biplane ran along its course and launched up, headed for the south, disappearing in a few moments, as though it were enjoying itself. The sun flashed on its cloth surfaces. It seemed to be part of the blue sky. It was too much for Hike.
“Start the motor—give the propeller a couple of whirls, will you!” Hike muttered to a mechanic, and an instant later he was hurtling down the field, at full speed, then jumping off the ground. He soared up—up—up—then turned, in a graceful circle, passed over the hangars, and headed north—toward Santa Benicia.
Up in the air again—oh! it was great! He felt as though he ought to come down and ask the Lieutenant’s permission before really taking a trip, but—this was so good! The cracking motor sounded sweeter to him than any music he had ever heard. He whooped as he faced the fresh breeze from the Pacific—and then he settled calmly down to reaching Santa Benicia Academy as soon as he could.
It was forty miles away, and he was flying at eighty miles an hour. The slender, fishy body cut through air like a shark churning foam. He had to make a curve around San Francisco, but nevertheless he sighted the towers of the academy in thirty-five minutes after he had left Tanforan—and it seemed like five minutes.
He was careful. (“Sure I’m careful!” he apologized to himself.) He had to watch out for the differences in control between the monoplane and the tetrahedral—the elevating planes were at the opposite end, and worked oppositely, for instance.
But careful or not, he was so excited over speeding again that he had to yell “Wow, WOW!” about every three minutes, to relieve his nerves. He’d never lose his love for the Hustle. No other machine could load enough gasoline to speed across the country, and carry a large enough motor to make two hundred an hour. But this—this was like riding on a bow of a torpedo-boat going at forty knots, while driving the Hustle was like strolling along the decks of a big liner, easier but not half so exciting. So Hike whooped and sang, in the cockpit, close to the wings, and hurled the Paulhan-Tatin at Santa Benicia.
He circled all about the campus twice, then darted down in the Yard, landing at sixty miles an hour—like a bullet striking a steel plate and glancing off. He shot across the long grass plot, with the body of the machine bumping and leaping up into the air, as it bounced on the tires of its wheels. The tail flapped as though the whole machine was going to turn over. It looked as if the nose would smash into the archway, at the end of the Yard. It stopped only a few feet away.
Hike looked slightly scared, as he crawled out of the cockpit. “Gee! That’s different from landing in the Hustle!” he admitted. “I didn’t think even a monoplane would come down quite that fast!”