CHAPTER XIV ANDY TAKES A DARING CHANCE

Andy read the note, re-read it, walked to the edge of the gallery and looked up and down the wide river. His face was pale. Then he consulted his watch. It was fifteen minutes after twelve o’clock.

“Ah reckon dey all gib yo’ de go by,” said Ba, with a laugh.

Instead of replying, Andy turned and entered the house. On the kitchen table was his luncheon. Evidently this was not in the boy’s mind at that moment. In the living room, he went to the chart-rack and took down the map of the Bahama Islands.

Spreading it out on the table, he weighted the ends, and sat for a few moments, his eyes fixed upon it and his chin in his hands. Then with a pencil and a bit of cardboard for a ruler, he drew lines at right angles through the mouth of Goat Creek and the westernmost end of the Grand Bahama Banks. Following the horizontal lines to the nearest degrees marked on the chart, he had the latitude of each point. The same operation with the vertical lines gave him the longitude.

These degrees, minutes, and seconds, he wrote down in his memorandum book in this form:

Goat Creek	North Lat.	27° 57' 30"	— W. Long.	80° 37' 30"
Grand Banks	North Lat.	26° 45'	— W. Long.	78° 54'
		————		————
		1° 12' 30"		1° 43' 30"

The subtraction showed him the difference between the two points in degrees of latitude and longitude. Andy had no tables to show him the exact number of geographic miles in a degree of latitude or longitude in that part of the world. But, with the knowledge that a degree of either was practically seventy miles at the equator, he computed the number at fifty miles.

The boy was fresh enough in his mathematics to know that the hypotenuse of a rectangle eighty-six miles by sixty-one miles would be approximately—not allowing for the curvature of the earth—one hundred miles. And this he set down as the distance between Captain Anderson’s dock and the nearest Bahama land.

There was no time wasted in speculation on this point. Andy had evidently come to a decision, and he was working directly to a specific end. With the chart yet before him, he went to the mantel, where, close beside the captain’s binoculars, always rested a small compass. Squaring the chart sheet with the north and south line of the compass, Andy laid the compass directly over the mouth of Goat Creek. Then he extended his bit of cardboard from the center of the compass to the tip of the Bahama Bank.

The edge of the card cut the compass along the S.E. by S. line. That was a course. With another note of this under his latitude and longitude, the boy sprang up, folded the chart into a square to fit his pocket, dropped the compass into another pocket, and smiled nervously.

“I reckon I’d better eat something,” he said.

Returning to the kitchen, he partook of a slice of cold ham, some bread and butter, and a big drink of water. As he started to leave, he again paused with the same nervous smile. This time he took half an apple pie, the remainder of the ham, a few slices of bread, and filled a glass fruit jar with water. Passing through the house again, he stopped at his trunk and secured a light-weight sweater and a pair of gloves. Then he passed out onto the gallery, and on the bottom of the paper still hanging on the door, he wrote:

“Captain Anderson: Excuse my taking your map and compass and pie and ham. To my mother: I’m off on a trip in the aeroplane. Don’t worry. I’ll be back to-morrow or send word soon. Good-bye.

“Andy.”

A few minutes later the boy had the tarpaulin off the engine. There was a close examination of the motor, oil cups were newly filled, and a can of lubricator was tied to one of the stanchions. An empty gasoline tank was made fast in the passenger seat, and in a light basket attached to a second stanchion, the busy lad deposited his sweater, water bottle, luncheon, a hatchet, a box of matches, a small hank of seine cord, some screws, wire, and a screw-driver. Then he lashed to the middle-section lower struts a bundle of spruce strips suitable for repairing the frame of the car.

“Yo’ gwine fly away?” asked Ba, when Andy’s preparations finally suggested this to the dull-witted black.

“See this, Ba?” answered the boy, touching the empty gasoline tin. “I’m goin’ up to my uncle’s place to fill this tank.”

This was true, but only in part. The moment Andy had found his mother and his hosts absent, he had instantly conceived the idea of making a flight to the shop on the hill to secure more gasoline. When his face whitened out on the gallery, this idea had given birth to another one—he would do this, and if all seemed well, he would steel himself to take the great chance of his life. If ever, this was the time to tempt fate with his big idea. It might even mean death, but Andy put that possibility aside. He saw only the opportunity to win fame and reputation; to become a Roy Osborne or a Walter Brookins.

With the help of the colored man, Andy got the aeroplane out on the sand beach and persuaded his assistant to become his human anchor. At his uncle’s house he would have a hill on which to pick up his momentum. The boy looked at his watch—it was three minutes after one o’clock.

There was another delay while the vigilant would-be aviator made further preparations. With a cord, he tied his watch, facing him, on the nearest stanchion, and with four long screws made a little pocket on the lower beam of the car beneath his legs, in which he deposited his compass.

“Good-bye, Ba,” he exclaimed, these details completed, as he held out his hand.

The colored man touched his forehead in salute, and then clumsily gave the boy his powerful hand.

“Yo’ gwine come right back?” he asked.

But the boy did not reply. He was already starting the engine, and Ba fell to his task of holding the car. There was neither a break nor miss in the engine, and as the dust settled over the grim-set negro, Andy crawled into his seat.

“Hold her!” he exclaimed sharply, and once more the engine sprang into action. Faster and faster it flew, but the trembling, tugging car was safe in Ba’s powerful grip.

“All right!” shouted Andy at last, and while Ba fell back, the Pelican was cluttering over the beach with the quick roll of a sand snipe. Then she took the air. Andy did not wait for altitude. As soon as he felt that the rushing air had his car on its breast, he began his turn, mounting as he did so.

It was but a moment or so until the aeroplane swept over the pier, having turned and headed north. As it approached the boat landing on which Ba had taken up his anxious watch, the boy dropped the car until it was not over fifty feet above the river.

“Wait here, Ba, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The ease with which the car worked elated Andy. That he might not become over confident and to see if everything was all right, he began to mount again at once. He seemed to fall into the trick naturally. Before Goat Creek was reached, he was nearly a thousand feet above the river. Then, taking the turn and dip like a veteran, and without the slightest fear, Andy headed the aerial craft for the house on the hill.

The landing was made a little abruptly, but nothing was broken. Pushing the machine to the top of the hill, the boy turned it, and, throwing off his coat, began the work of refilling his engine gasoline tank and getting the extra can aboard.

Then he entered the house, wrote a note, which he addressed to his mother, locked the place and put the key in the envelope with his note. This time he buttoned up his coat and reversed his cap as Roy Osborne had done, for, from the time he made this ascension, he would have neither time nor opportunity to do anything but direct his car at untried heights, over unknown land and sea to fame and glory. He did not stop to think of anything else.

From the time his engine started and the big propellers began to revolve, he was sorry that he had not brought Ba along to hold the car until it had begun to feel the pressure of the air. With nearly the first motion of the propellers, the aeroplane began to move forward and slowly descend the hill. The new angle seemed to prevent the planes from catching the air, and, as the frame gathered momentum and continued to rumble along over the dry grass, Andy pushed his engine in vain.

The wheels seemed as if running on a track. Like a flash, an idea came to the alarmed operator, and as he shut off the engine, Andy put on the wheel brake. Just at the base of the hill and in front of the hummock swamp, the Pelican was brought to a stop.

“Escape number one,” said Andy, “and my own experience number one.”

Then, laboriously and slowly, he managed to get the wide, balanced frame up the slope again and to the top of the hill.

“I’m in fine shape now,” thought Andy, the perspiration oozing from him and his muscles all a tremble, “but there ain’t any choice.”

He delayed only long enough to get a drink, to wipe his face, and readjust his coat, then once again he mounted his seat. This time his first act was to put on the wheel brake. Then he opened his engine and, to his relief, found the car holding while the propellers got into action.

When at last the powerful propelling screws began to tilt the car forward and the rear bird-tail guide began to lift itself from the ground, the alert aviator released the brake, and once again the fragile frame started down the hill. But this time he could feel it jumping at once, and when he gave it the upward rudder, the hurtling craft immediately responded. Like a soaring bird, it took the air and was off.

It was but a few moments until the Anderson bungalow was in sight, and Andy headed directly for it. Dropping a little, he got out his envelope containing the message to his mother and placed it between his knees. He did not attempt to call to the colored man, but when he was nearly over the still waiting and apparently transfixed Ba, the boy opened his knees and the envelope fluttered down.

The paper fell in the water, but the colored man rescued it and then stood for a long time gazing at the aeroplane growing smaller in the distance. Hours before Captain Anderson’s Valkaria reached the pier that evening, the Pelican was out of sight. And the last that the vigilant negro saw of it was as it faded into the southeast sky.

Even the stupid Ba knew that the message he had in his shirt would mean a wild commotion among the passengers who alighted from the Valkaria. For a time he held aloof, waiting to speak to Captain Anderson alone. It was wholly dark when Mr. and Mrs. Leighton and Captain and Mrs. Anderson reached the house.

A few minutes later the two men rushed from the cottage, while two women followed behind with wild exclamations. Ba thrust his message into Captain Anderson’s hands and disappeared in the night. Andy’s note read:

“Bulletin No. 1. Took more gasoline at Leighton’s shop at eight minutes after one. Weather fair, with light southwest wind. Started for Grand Bahama Banks on Pelican at 1:12 P.M. Hope to reach Nassau, New Providence, to-morrow after stop on Grande Banks. Will report by wire on reaching destination. Am well and confident. Love to all.

“Andy.”

If the foolhardy boy could have witnessed the scene that followed in the Anderson home, he would have abandoned his aviation ideas on the spot. In an hour the philosophy and arguments of Mr. Leighton and Captain Anderson began to calm Andy’s mother in a degree, and then those concerned proceeded to make what plans they could to accomplish, if possible, the boy’s rescue, for it seemed to be conceded that even then he must be verging on destruction, if indeed he were not already lost.

At Captain Anderson’s suggestion, Lake Worth was immediately called by telephone, and the Nassau Steamer Company was asked to notify its steamers in transit by wireless of Andy’s flight. He would probably be north of their course, but they were asked to keep a lookout. They were also asked to repeat the message to Nassau, that spongers and fish boats leaving port might also be on the watch.

“He may change his mind,” argued the captain, “and make a landing far down the peninsula, without putting out to sea. If he does, he will be in a wilderness.”

Mr. and Mrs. Leighton were so agitated that they could not even protest when the captain, a little later, determined to set out in the Valkaria at once and proceed down the river. It was one hundred and thirty miles, at least, from the captain’s home to Lake Worth. There were little settlements here and there on the mainland side of the river and a wilderness for the entire distance on the peninsula side, where a strip of palmetto scrub and sand separated the sea from the river.

The captain’s plan was to sail at once, secure a couple of men at each settlement, carry them across the river, and start them north and south along the ocean in search of a possible wreck of the Pelican. At the next town this would be repeated. By the following evening he hoped to cover a good part of the wild country in this manner.

Beyond this, there was nothing that could be done. In the house of desolation Andy’s parents waited sorrowfully for some word. At nine o’clock the captain had sailed, Ba, as usual, showing up in time to join him. Through the night there was no news. Captain Anderson reported about nine o’clock the next morning from far down the river. There was no sign of wreck or trace of the missing boy.

The steamer arrived that day at Lake Worth with a report of nothing seen. Wednesday and Thursday went by with no word. Thursday morning Captain Anderson returned up river by train, Ba bringing the boat later. Thursday evening at six o’clock came a telephone call from Melbourne—a cable message from New York. It read:

“Andros Island, via Nassau, New Providence, by boat. Safe. Record Grande Banks. Here noon to-day. O.K. Leave few days steamer. Andy.”

The enigmatic message was hard to read, but the last word was enough.

“Anyway,” sobbed Mrs. Leighton, “he’s coming back by boat.”

But the next boat and the next arrived at Lake Worth from Nassau without Andy, and then in desperation his parents took farewell of Captain and Mrs. Anderson and journeyed to that resort to await their son.