CHAPTER II Arrival of a Stranger

Not always, and in fact seldom, are things so important and unusual as a Transatlantic aerial flight, to be carried out strictly according to prearranged plans and schedule.

Long before the final details of this great expedition had been decided upon, careful students of flying had foreseen that preliminary to the establishment of that method of transport as one of the dependable arts of commerce, the study of the air, the weather, and atmospheric conditions generally, would have to advance farther than it ever has thus far, and that upon that knowledge aeroplanes and dirigibles in passenger and freight service would be operated upon schedules almost as regular as those of our railroads and steamship lines today; more like the latter, however, in that seasonal conditions would largely govern arrivals and departures.

In other words, that the study of atmospheric conditions would make it possible to know, from the average that had obtained over, say, a period of five or ten years, about what sort of weather might be expected to prevail at every important flight point, or over every regular flying route, throughout every part of the year.

Such a study, so far as it had been possible to advance it, had been made prior to the present proposed flight, and the schedule was arranged for what was believed would be the most propitious time in the year, both for the start and for the conditions expected to be encountered once the planes had left sight of America and had started upon the long, perilous and uncharted course across the Atlantic Ocean.

But alas, as the poet said, for "the best-laid plans of mice and men."

Contrary to every plan and calculation, in direct opposition to every hope and prediction, it had rained with only occasional and brief interruptions for the greater part of three days and three nights, and now, on this, the morning of the fifth day since the crews had arrived at Halifax, the first promise of better weather was held forth in a stiff breeze that was blowing from the northwest.

And as well may be imagined, this first sign of relief had not come too soon. As a matter of fact, a blue funk had prevailed over the entire camp ever since the storm had set in. It hadn't been so bad at first, when there were a hundred and one things that each crew could find to do in the way of big and little details looking to increased speed, efficiency and safety throughout the trip.

But when each man of each crew finally had to admit his imagination exhausted in finding such work with which to pass the time, then came the long, slow, nerve-racking, patience-killing, disposition-spoiling wait, in which they could only attempt to console one another with predictions of an early clearing, in which they only half believed themselves.

Checkers, chess, and improvised shuffleboard and hand-ball had been resorted to, even to the extent of a checker tournament in which every crew had its entry and Dave Bemis, of the Falcon outfit, had carried off the camp honors and the admitted championship.

But, faced with the responsibilities of succeeding in a non-stop ocean flight of approximately two thousand miles, these were small and ineffective diversions, and in the indoor games many a man had made his moves mechanically and abstractedly, giving proof to the old saying that he was, mentally at least, "up in the air."

Now, under the most favorable conditions, it was bound to be two or three days longer before the flight could start, but there was at least the encouragement that it was a definite prospect.

"Say, fellows," said Andy Flures, entering their hangar after the fifth weather survey he had made in the last hour, "I'll tell you what let's do. There isn't another tap of work of any sort that I know of that can be put on our plane, and we've still got a lot of time on our hands. What do you say if we try to get some of the others together for some field sports—running, jumping, pole vault and track—regular old-fashioned all-round contest like we used to have at Brighton?"

"Andy, you're a wonder," ejaculated Fred Bentner, immediately enthusiastic. "Why, it's just what we need to limber up our muscles and put new ginger into us. We've been sitting around moping too long already."

"Yes," agreed Big Jack, "if by some chance or accident it should develop that we should start upon the flight today we're in no mental condition for it. Our minds are groggy. We've sort of gone sour. We want to limber up our joints, as Fred says, and at the same time get our grouches out of our systems. Nothing like a real athletic contest for that."

"I'm with you heart and soul," echoed Donald Harlan. "Let's sound the others out right away."

And then and there they appointed each other committees of one to visit the other crews to get the thing started.

Half an hour later a score of young men, ruddy of complexion, clear of eye, supple of action, men who did not know the meaning of physical fear, were gathered together in the spirit of schoolboys on the big field that fronted the giant hangars in which were stored the powerful machines that soon were to vie with each other, even as now their pilots and mechanics were about to do, in a historical contest of the air.

By unanimous agreement Dr. Charles P. Vorhees, now a sedate and high-salaried official in Uncle Sam's Weather Bureau, but a few years ago a well-known athletic star at Yale, was made referee of the contests. His own reputation in athletics had been such as to preclude even a suspicion of partisanship or favoritism in his decisions, and further than that he was personally popular with every air-man there.

"Let's make at least part of this contest different from the average," suggested Dr. Vorhees, as the men gathered about to hear his suggestions. "Men in your line of work expect and even seek the unusual, rather than the ordinary. You get your thrills out of doing new things. Very well, then, instead of trying to lay out a track over the driest parts of the field, let's select a course over the soggiest sections, and then have a race with some real difficulties in it."

"Sure; just the thing," came half a dozen voices in unison.

And then the brilliant mind of Archie Brown, of the Falcon crew, added another novel thought.

"Why not do it on snowshoes?" he offered. "The going is heavy enough, and that ought to help make it unusual."

"Gee! Snowshoeing in the mud! Corking idea!"

The chorus of approval left no doubt that in this aggregation no task was regarded as really hard, no difficulty as insurmountable.

"But where would we get the snowshoes?" asked Dr. Vorhees, shaking with laughter as he surveyed the heavily mudded field, and already seeing in prospect the ludicrous probabilities of such a contest as Brown had suggested.

"Leave it to me," the latter replied. "It was having seen twenty or thirty pairs only last night that brought the thing to my mind."

He trotted off across the field, to where a bleak building stood out uninvitingly against the horizon. It was the general storehouse of the coast guard station at that point, and was in charge of the ex-whaling captain with whom Big Jack Carew had discussed Newfoundland weather conditions on his first morning there. And the former whaler, it proved, was as good a sport as he was skipper.

"Would he lend Archie Brown the twenty pairs of snowshoes which that youth had seen stowed away there one day while he was holding a lengthy conversation with the old salt?"

Of course, the question wasn't put or repeated in just that language, but that was its full purport. Would he? Well, the genial sailor of the northern seas rubbed his stubbled chin for a moment, listened while Archie outlined in detail the purpose for which the shoes were desired, wrinkled his brow, shifted his "chaw" from the right cheek to the left, squinted out to where the foregathered flyers awaited his decision—and then he offered a sort of compromise. He would lend the shoes, providing he was permitted to lay out the course. No particular reason, of course. Oh, no! Just wanted to sort of have a hand in the thing, so to speak.

Well, he did. He had a hand in it, and, as it developed later, the others were in with both feet. But that's getting ahead too rapidly.

With the captain following more slowly, Archie raced across the field to inform the others of the condition under which the snowshoes had been loaned. In a jiffy they agreed that certainly they would grant an ancient mariner's small whim like that. Why not? Anyway, it was necessary, in order to get the shoes.

And so, when the erstwhile whaler joined the group, he immediately was informed by Dr. Vorhees that they waited upon him, as an honored and informed native, to indicate a foot-race course over which some eager young men, equipped with snowshoes, might, perhaps, encounter some difficulties to add zest to the friendly encounter.

"Seein's ye cain't hev the shoes 'nless ye meet thet condition, I'm not going to be perticerly het up about th' honor yer conferin'," answered the weather-beaten old salt callously. "But I thenk ye, nevertheless."

He stepped to the front of the group, so that they formed a semicircle about him.

"See thet old stump of a tree stickin' up out thar?" he asked, indicating with outstretched right arm the distant skeleton of what once had been a towering cedar.

"Yes," answered half a dozen, following the direction in which he pointed, almost due east.

"Wall, then," the old captain continued, "we'll consider the course a straight line to thet 'ere stump, and then, roundin' that, straight off to thet other healthier tree up thar," indicating a point fully three hundred yards north of the dead cedar, "and then straight back here."

The twenty young men began lacing on the snowshoes which Archie and the captain had brought with them.

"Ye can make any other conditions ye want," the latter added, "but if I'm not mistaken thet'll take ye some time—an' prove yer mettle."

It was not until later that they realized why he chuckled so after making this final remark. They went ahead with their preparations. Some of the youths had had considerable experience in snowshoeing; others had never had a pair upon their feet. It is safe to say, however, that none of them ever set out upon such a trip with them before.

As they stood in line ready for the start, the old whaling captain uttered his final admonition. "Around thet old stump, remember, and from there up to thet big tree, then home. An' remember thet old rule of 'rithmetic—the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Straight from thet stump to the tree." He looked at Dr. Vorhees, gave a sly wink which none but that individual saw, and a moment later the lumbering men were off.

For the first five minutes the going was not hard, although for the inexperienced there were unsuspected difficulties and time after time one or another of them, placing the desire for speed above caution, got suddenly stuck, and then of natural momentum went headlong into the mud, at the same time experiencing sudden and disconcerting stretching and straining of the muscles and tendons of their legs.

In the next ten minutes it became a straggling line, with the more expert in the lead, the novices laboring along with many a grunt of surprise and disgust, but all staying gamely in the contest, in spite of all the unexpected handicaps it developed.

But as the three leaders in the race reached and rounded the old stump they became suddenly and painfully aware of the trick which the shrewd old whaler had played upon them. These leaders were Big Jack Carew, the unpopular Henryson, and a navigator named George Boardman. Behind them the long and irregularly progressing line was a ludicrous manifestation of human determination and endeavor, under the most unexpected forms of surprises and handicaps; for the course, even over its first leg, was not merely a stretch of muddy field, but an uninterrupted succession of treacherous hidden bogs and marshes, whose surfaces were apparently but patches of juicy mud.

Around the stump, however, the character of the course became even worse, and it wasn't long before those in the lead realized that they were in reality treading the bed, or rather channel, of a recently-formed miniature creek.

"No fool, that fellow," growled Boardman, puffing laboriously to extricate one foot that seemed to be drawn down into the ground with the tenacious pull and grip of a suction pump. "He's got the laugh on us all right."

"Who-o-r-rp!" Henryson, a little in the lead, turning for an instant to make a reply, had miscalculated grievously, and now, a victim of his own folly in having even for a second taken his eyes from his course, was lying face downward in a morass of slimy mud, his arms working like the paddle wheels of a ferryboat.

There was a shout of derisive laughter from behind, as there had been every time any one had, as Donald expressed it, "bitten the dust." But Henryson, naturally a poor sport and sour-natured, was doubly angered and chagrined not alone by the stagnant depths into which his unhappy disaster had precipitated him, but also by the fact that he had lost the lead and at least three others were now ahead of him. It was left to happy Andy Flures to reap the full measure of the Norwegian's wrath.

Three times Andy himself had been down in the mud, but each time he had come up smiling and more determined than ever to finish the race.

"Why the tail-dip?" he asked of Henryson as he came up; and there was another gale of laughter.

Henryson's color rose and showed through pink, even under his facial covering of mire. He muttered something under his breath, and then, instead of being cooled by that brief outlet to his anger, completely lost control of himself.

He suddenly bent forward, as though to tighten his shoe, grasped a handful of mud, and before Andy could realize his intention or even shield himself from it, Henryson hurled it, striking Flures squarely in the face.

There was a gasp from the men behind, and a shout of anger from the old whaling captain. Involuntarily everyone came to a halt.

Like most good-natured people, Andy Flures was not a man to be insulted in that way. With dangerous calm and precision he removed the plastered mud from his eyes, and then, never wavering, but without undue haste, stalked over to where Henryson stood. And before that individual was aware of what was happening to him, Andy grabbed him in an iron grip, turned him upside down as though Henryson weighed no more than a doll, and then, with a tremendous lunge, planted him head-first into the slime, up to his shoulders.

It seemed a full minute he stood thus, his feet threshing the air, before he sufficiently unbalanced to fall of his own weight.

When Henryson had finally regained his feet and could see and hear, the old whaling captain was standing in front of him. The others, including Andy, at his signal, were continuing over the designated course, but all could hear him as he bawled out at the Norwegian:

"Young man, take off them shoes."

Without a word Henryson began to do as he was bidden.

"Now lissen here," the old whaler continued, as Henryson handed him the snowshoes that had been the cause of his misfortune and such a nasty display of humor. "When I laid out this course it was my idea to see a little fun. I knew it would be soggy goin', but I thought I was dealin' with sportsmen, and I was—all except you. You're my idea of a no-account, that's what you are."

Before this tirade from a man nearly thrice his age Henryson stood abashed.

"And one thing more," the old seaman continued. "There was once a man named Shakespeare, that it might surprise you to know I ever heard of. Well, around here I'm what he called 'clothed with a little brief authority.' I'm the constabule. I'm not het up about it, but I want to tell ye this: you get the slightest bit gay around this harbor and I'll run ye into the calaboose so quick ye won't know what happened to ye. And ye won't be out in time to make eny flight to Europe, either; though if ye ever git there I hope ye stay."

Henryson, a lone and ostracized man, stalked across the field just as Big Jack Carew, laughing and puffing, came in a winner, twenty yards ahead of the next nearest man.

Thereafter there were broad-jumps, high-jumps, pole-vault contests and many other tryouts in athletic skill, but it remained for Fred Bentner to show them something in the way of novelty in almost monkey-like agility.

There stood at the upper end of the big field two strong, permanent upright posts, with a horizontal bar fastened to them about eight feet above the ground. At one time it had been used for the purposes of winding cable. Jumping and catching this lateral bar, Fred began twirling about it with such speed that his body looked most like the rapidly-revolving blade of a propeller.

Then, when he was going so rapidly that it did not seem that he possibly could know his exact and instantaneous position, he suddenly let go, and, to the gasps of the men who were looking on, shot off through the air at a horizontal tangent.

Swift as an arrow his body hurtled through space. Thirty feet away he landed, feet up, as though he had taken but an ordinary broad-jump.

"Bravo!" came surprised and wondering shouts.

"Measure it," said Fred, quietly, joining the others.

They did. "Thirty-three feet," announced Dr. Vorhees, "and I'd call it some stunt."

It was nearing sunset when the final contests of this novel field day were brought to a conclusion, but every man who had participated in it, with the exception of Henryson, felt a hundredfold better for the physical exertions they had been through. It proved to be a mental as well as a physical tonic.

But final events, as proved later, turned out to be most significant.

It was long after dark when the four young men, returning to their hut from that of another crew, were brought to a sudden halt a hundred feet away from their own hangar.

"What's that?" Big Jack had whispered, at the same time attracting the attention of the other three to a form barely discernible in the night, as it skulked along in the dense shadow of the big building.

"It's a man, and apparently bent on no good," said Andy Flures, at the same time starting for the hangar on a run, followed closely by the others.

But they were too late. The intruder, whoever he was and whatever his errand, had discovered them at the same time they had seen him and had made his escape in the night. They searched for fifteen minutes, but in vain. They went inside, and found everything apparently exactly as they had left it.

"Well, that's a queer one," said Big Jack, as they sat around discussing it before retiring. "The fellow might have meant no harm at all, but we're at least on our guard against any trickery."

"Yes," agreed Don, "and for one I'm in favor of going over every inch of our plane tomorrow."

And with that excellent precaution agreed upon, they went to bed.