“If I thought, I’d probably never go!”
III.
“I wish I was back in Texas. This muggy heat makes me sweat like ⸺.”
“Any amount of heat that can wring moisture out of your skin and bones deserves respect, Larry,” returned Broughton, shifting his body a trifle so that he could lie more comfortably.
The two men were lying in the shade of an S. E. 5 wing on the line in front of the Engineering Department hangars.
“Where’s Covington now? By the time he gets through testing that Martin it’ll have flown twice as far as we’re going to fly it and be all ready to get out of whack again,” remarked Hinkley, rolling a stem of grass around in between his lips.
“It’ll be right when we get it though. Did he say it was fully equipped?”
Hinkley nodded.
“Even our suitcases are in, and artillery enough to equip all the armies of the allies. That’s the ship now, isn’t it?”
Both men watched the Martin which was gliding majestically over the hangars on the Western edge of the field. It was wide and squat-looking, the one motor on each wing with the nose of the observers cockpit between giving it the impression of a monster with a face. Over seventy feet of wing-spread, two Liberty motors, weighing nearly five tons with a full load—it seemed so massive that the idea of flying it would have been ridiculous to a landsman who had never seen one in the air. There was none of the lightness and trimness usually associated with airplanes.