Motor Matt's Reverse; or, Caught in a Losing Cause

by Stanley R. Matthews

[CHAPTER VI.]

THE AIR LINE INTO TROUBLE.

Motor Matt had the Wells County country firmly fixed in his mind. He had never been over it, but he had studied the map and secured a fairly good theoretical knowledge. Sykestown was at the end of the branch road, the railroads east and west, and north and south, forming a right angle with respect to Fort Totten. Carrington, the junction point, was at the corner of the angle.

By using the aëroplane, Matt believed he could fly straight across the gap between Fort Totten and Sykestown, giving Carrington a wide berth. There were some hills, but what were hills and roads to him while in the air? Rough country would bother the automobile—it could not affect the aëroplane.

Aëroplanes, Matt had gathered from his reading on the subject, were peculiar in this, that no two machines ever conduct themselves exactly the same in flight. A pair of "flyers" may be built exactly on the same model, with all dimensions and power equipment identical, and yet the moment they leave earth and launch themselves into the blue each develops eccentricities peculiar to itself. In a great measure, every machine has to be "learned."

This was the one point that bothered Matt. Would the new aëroplane be easy or difficult to learn? If difficult, he might have to make a few trial flights at Camp Traquair before setting off for Sykestown.

Morning dawned propitiously. The sun was bright, the day cloudless, and only a breath of air stirring.

While the boys were at breakfast, Cameron came chugging into camp with a powerful touring car—a six-cylinder, sixty horse, so trim and "classy"-looking that Matt had to smother a fierce desire to drop into the driver's seat and change his plans.

Soldiers, under Sergeant O'Hara, were to strip the camp while the boys were away, removing everything to the post.

In building the aëroplane, Matt had made a number of departures from Traquair's original designs. One of these was the equipping of the flying machine with two gasoline tanks instead of one, the supply of fuel being taken from either at will.