But Martin Priest merely turned back to him, with a grin that made his prophet face look very good-natured. Then—Martin Priest took his hands entirely off the levers, stood up, and began to sing a hymn!
Gone crazy, Hike first thought—just now, when all his skill was needed, to keep them safe on the long glide to earth! Hike’s backbone seemed frozen. Then he looked at Martin Priest’s face again, and down to earth. The Hustle was sinking as easily as a feather, with a little creaking of her many planes. Only a tetrahedral could flutter down like that.
Lieutenant Adeler stood up, made ready to grapple with Martin Priest. “Let ’im alone,” shrieked Hike. “We’re going all right. Part of the test.”
“Good boy,” Martin Priest stopped singing to say. “It is. The tetrahedral can’t be wrecked.” Then he stepped back to the engine, and tried her spark.
When they had softly, easily, settled down to about a hundred feet from the earth, so that the branches of trees below seemed rushing up at them, Priest yelled to the Lieutenant, “Push that right lever forward.”
As the lever slid forward, Martin Priest started the engine. After the silence, it was deafening; like the crackling of a hundred machine-guns at once. Hike could scarcely hear himself, but he shouted again and again, while they darted up, then soared aloft to five thousand feet.
As they flew over Monterey, the people rushed from the streets and gardens up to the tops of their Spanish adobe houses. They were used to ordinary Jolls biplanes, but this great bird was different. On the fashionable drives and tennis-courts of the Del Monte hotel, rich Eastern tourists gazed up till their necks ached.
Hike yelled in Martin Priest’s ear, “Let me try her!”
“Sure,” roared back Priest, though Lieutenant Adeler, guessing what was up, shook his head. “See this lever. It raises and deflects elevating planes, for’ard there. Makes her go up and down. This one, on the left, controls her rudder—back there, like a ship’s rudder. Say, I can’t yell against this. Even fifty horse-power’s too much.”
Calmly, Priest stopped the engine. The silence sounded louder than the motor had, for a minute, and Hike yelled “Ouch!” clapping his hands to his ears.