“Just two things,” croaked Hike, huskily. “Keep this out of the papers—don’t say how you got rescued. And then maybe some day I may come buttin’ in asking you if you won’t put some capital behind the inventor of this aeroplane. As a business proposition. Gee, I’m tired. I’m going to beat it back home. Come on, Poodle. Crawl in. Say, you people, I guess from the way it looks when you’re way up in the aeroplane, you’ll find a road about a mile east of here. I’ll tell your people you’re on it—have ’em send teams. So long.”
Blushing at making so long a speech before so many people, Hike again started his motor, and was off for home.
CHAPTER VI
GO!
It was the day before the date on which the Army Board of Aviation would meet at Washington—a Monday in August. Hike Griffin sat with Poodle and Martin Priest at the Hustle’s shed. Lieutenant Adeler was still up at Benicia Arsenal.
Captain Willoughby Welch had not come back to Monterey, before starting for Washington to report on the best model of aeroplane for the Army to purchase. He had never even looked at the tetrahedral, and it was certain that he would declare to the Army Board that the Jolls—the P. J. Jolls Company’s—biplanes and monoplanes were the only possible sort for the Army to purchase. The Army Board would not hear a word about the tetrahedral.
Lieutenant Adeler and Hike had both written to Welch, but he had answered merely that he would try to get back to Monterey.
Hike was talking, and Martin Priest was listening with great respect, for he had heard of Hike’s rescue of the shipwrecked yacht crew. Poodle had thus described what happened after the affair:
“Well, as soon as he gets back to Pacific Grove, Mr. Man puts on a clean pair of pants and, says he, ‘I will now beat it over to Monterey and call on the angel wot saved me—that angel named Geerawld, and ask him will he let me give him a toy cart to play with.’ He finds Priesty here, and, says he, ‘Priest,’ says he, ‘young Hike is a’ angel.’ Priesty, knowing him better, ’lows that Hike ain’t a angel, but a chimpanze-faced spoon-cat, as orders his pleasant young friend Torrington Darby around something scandalous. Also he ’lows that it was li’l Torry that really saved the wrecked crew, like he was in a moving picture show.
“But Mr. Man tells Priesty that Hike done it all, and now that horrid Hike had cer-tain-ly got Priesty going.
“‘Stick your engine out on the end of your um-dee-diddle,’ says Hike, ‘so’s it’ll get more purchase on the bizangus.’ ‘Yessir, right away, sir,’ says Priesty and—”