Then they began to plan the trip up to Monterey.
CHAPTER IV
THE AEROPLANE’S FIRST FLIGHT
With the patched Gnome engine, with Hike and Lieutenant Adeler and Martin Priest and nearly two thousand pounds of Priest’s baggage, the tetrahedral Hustle I stood ready to start.
There is no use denying it—Hike felt a little nervous. He had flown with the Lieutenant several times, in well-tested Jolls ’planes, but with this new machine, that looked like a castle made of playing cards by some child, he was waiting to find out whether or not he was going to be scared! He didn’t think he would be, but Poodle was grinning at him and declaring that he sure would be.
Martin Priest, the driver, snapped on the control. The tetrahedral’s engine began racing. Down the slope in front of the aerodrome she ran, bumping and hopping, then plunged out into the air, easily as a bird. Suddenly they were two hundred feet up, crossing a foothill, rising up—up—with the elevating planes sharply tilted upward. Hike yelled with joy, for never had he felt more comfortable, more like some big eagle, than then.
The earth sank below them, and left them free of it. There was none of the jar of the smaller ordinary Jolls ’planes. The tetrahedral, though it was gaining in speed, rode as smoothly and easily as a huge steamer.
They curved over the Big Peak, and a gust of wind—a real flaw—swooped up at them from the cold valley beyond. Then they struck a “hole in the air,” and the Hustle dropped two hundred feet. But she did not go down like a shot—she took the drop easily.
Again Hike shouted, and settled back in his seat, looking out to the blue sunny stretch of the Pacific Ocean, longing to soar over it in the Hustle. He laughed down at the arroyos and hills beneath them, over which they were passing so easily. They looked like small folds in a heap of green velvet.
In twenty minutes, they were in sight of Monterey. As they passed the Carmel valley, there was a crackling from the engine; it missed a stroke, and then suddenly stopped.
Hike was much interested to find that he wasn’t scared, after all. Here they were, two thousand feet up, balanced on nothing but air, with the ground very far below, and with the engine stopped.