CHAPTER X DESPERATE NEEDS AND A BOLD APPEAL

Before the end of the coming week the aeroplane would be finished. As this time approached, Andy began to be greatly bothered. At first, he had worried alone over the airship and the possibility of being able to construct it. Now, he was satisfied that a practicable air craft would result.

“And what then?” Andy was debating this on Sunday morning as he stood before the idle boathouse. “What’s the good of it all? It’s a cinch that my mother ain’t goin’ to let me try to run it. And what if she does consent? For a fellow who hasn’t had a particle of experience, to bang away with a car like that’d be a crime. Everyone has to learn. I can, I know, but a fellow certainly don’t do it the first time. It’s twenty chances to one that I’d break the thing the first dash out of the box. Gee whiz! but it does seem a shame.”

“What’s a shame?” asked Captain Anderson, who was strolling to a seat on the pier.

Andy explained, walking by his friend’s side.

“Seems to me you’ve begun that line o’ reasoning pretty late,” commented the captain, as he filled his morning pipe. “To tell the truth, I haven’t bothered about it because I’ve thought all along that your mother would first object and then relent. And I supposed anyone could operate an aeroplane who had the nerve—”

“That’s it,” acknowledged Andy, “they can’t. I’m not afraid, but a fellow ought to begin with a gliding machine and learn how to handle it—get used to dips, angles, and darts, and what’s necessary to correct ’em. If he don’t do that, he should, at least, go up several times with someone who can tell him all about it.”

The captain drew on his pipe slowly.

“Then what have we been breakin’ our backs over?” he asked soberly. “All along we’ve been makin’ something we haven’t any use for.”

“I don’t agree with you there,” answered Andy positively. “It is of some use—we found we could make it.”

“Humph!” exclaimed the captain. “I could have told you that; I wouldn’t have begun her if I hadn’t known that.”

“You’re not sorry, are you?” asked the lad, a little plaintively.

“Sorry!” laughed Captain Anderson. “Not a bit, except for you. All I was doin’ was for fun and because you were so eager.”

“I know,” answered Andy quickly, “and you bet I’m grateful enough. I’m only gettin’ cold feet now because you’ve made such a dandy. If it was only my own work, a sort o’ patched up thing with a common engine, I’d bang away and take a chance in it, if I could. But I don’t believe there has ever been a better flyin’ machine made, and if I smashed her, I’d never forgive myself. But it ain’t because I’m afraid.”

“Then,” answered the old boat builder sympathetically, “we’ll finish the job if we never use the machine. It’ll be a nice piece of work—”

“And maybe something’ll happen,” interrupted the boy.

“There’s always a chance,” answered the man, with a big smile. “But I can’t see what can happen that’ll ever make it of use. Not unless the clouds part some day and drop a trained aviator at our feet—someone lookin’ for a job.”

“That’s it,” exclaimed the boy impulsively. “Not out of the clouds, of course. But, perhaps, maybe, someway, somehow such a man might happen along.”

The captain smiled and began to unfold his paper.

“Or,” went on Andy, “if he didn’t happen along, we might send for one—”

“Send for one!” exclaimed the man. “You mean hire an aviator to come down here into the wilderness?”

“I guess I didn’t mean that,” said Andy in confusion. “I don’t know what I meant.”

His companion saw tears of chagrin and disappointment almost showing.

“Don’t you bother, Andy. We’ll finish the airship in the best manner we can. I hardly think we can employ a professional aviator, but something may happen—something usually happens when you’re young enough and eager enough.”

“If mother lets me, I’ll do it anyway,” broke out the boy.

“And smash our beautiful machine?” laughed the captain.

Andy winced.

“Come,” went on the captain. “I always worry to-morrow. Run into the house, get something to read, and forget aeroplanes to-day. I think it’s gotten on your nerves a little.”

But the day was too fine for reading, and, as a good sailing breeze came up, Captain Anderson soon followed Andy, with a proposal that all, including Ba, should sail to Melbourne.

The plunge of the swift Valkaria through the water and the savor of the semi-salt spray were enough to revive all the lad’s old enthusiasm. He took the tiller at times, helped with the sheets, and, long before Melbourne was reached, the joy of sailing had pushed the aeroplane temporarily into the background.

While waiting in the parlor of the little hotel, his elders busy with new acquaintances, Andy stumbled upon something that set him thinking. In a few minutes, with almost a gasp—as if some idea was too much for him—he left the house and curled up on a seat on the gallery. His forehead was wrinkled. He had come to a sudden and bold decision, and he was trying to persuade himself that it was not ridiculous.

“Anything new botherin’ you, Andy?” asked Captain Anderson, as he appeared to tell the boy that dinner was ready.

“Nothin’ that’s botherin’ me,” answered Andy, in a rather confident tone, “but I’ve got an idea. I reckon it’s so foolish that I ain’t agoin’ to tell about it—yet.”

As the boy followed the man into the house, he folded up a newspaper he had found on the parlor table and put it into his pocket. After dinner Andy secured from the landlady some paper, an envelope, and a stamp. In the office, he wrote a letter which, however, he did not seal.

That done, he composed himself until there was talk of starting home. There was no post-office at Valkaria, and as Andy had an important letter that he wanted to mail at the earliest opportunity, he managed to get Captain Anderson aside.

A little nervously he drew out the paper he had in his pocket. It was an Indian River region paper—the Daytona Daily Beacon. The boy pointed to the main article on the front page—an account of the annual automobile speed contests to be held during the coming week. Although these races, which take place on Ormond’s famed ocean beach—hard and smooth as cement—are known all over the world, Captain Anderson had no great interest in them.

“You’d like to go?” he began, glancing at the article indifferently.

Instead of replying, the boy, his nervousness most apparent, ran his finger down the column, through the program, to the end, where it paused on a sub-head entitled: “Distinguished Visitors Present.” The captain’s eyes followed Andy’s shaking finger. Then he saw it pointing to two names. These were:

“J. W. Atkinson, President American Aeroplane Works, Newark, New Jersey. Mr. Roy Osborne, ditto.”

“Friends of yours?” asked the captain, still mystified.

“Never saw either,” exclaimed the boy. “But I want you to read this.”

He drew out his newly-written letter, and, fumbling it in his excitement, finally got the sheet in Captain Anderson’s hands. It read:

“Valkaria, Florida, Jan.——

“Mr. Roy Osborne,

“Care J. W. Atkinson, Pres. Am. Aeroplane Works, Daytona, Florida.

“Dear Sir:—You will be surprised to get this letter. But maybe you won’t be sorry. Like a good many other boys, I have read about your experiences with aeroplanes. I live in St. Paul, and the newspapers there published all about what you did in Utah. The papers said you are only 17 years old, and that is why I am writing this, as I am 16. As I said, I don’t live here, but I’ve been down here nearly two weeks, and I’m living with Captain Anderson, at this place. We have made an aeroplane that I am sure will fly. It has a new kind of rudder that I’ve never heard of before. Maybe it is a good thing. I am taking the liberty of writing this letter to you because the papers say you are a skilled aviator. And I thought maybe you would like to investigate the new rudder that we have made. I haven’t any money to pay you to do it, but I thought that you might like to do it anyway because you are a boy. It is only 85 miles to Valkaria from Daytona. I suppose you work for Mr. Atkinson, but if he will let you come, there is splendid boating down here, and we have some fine ripe pineapples and oranges, and I would be glad to show you our new airship. Trusting that I may be favored with an early reply, I am,

“Your obedient servant,

“Andrew Leighton.

“P.S.:—The engine was made by my uncle, and it is a beauty.”

When Captain Anderson finished reading the letter, his face was a puzzle. He frowned, he ran his hands through his heavy silvery hair, and he laughed.

“Andy,” he said, as he reached this stage, “you are certainly bound to get on in the world. Now, who’d have thought of that? Of course, he won’t come—”

“Why won’t he?” snapped the boy. “I would, if I were in his place and got a letter like that—”

“But he’s evidently at Daytona with his boss—”

“That’s it. They aren’t there for fun. They’re watching motors; they’re lookin’ for ideas.”

“But what do you know about him?”

Then Andy told the story of Roy Osborne, which is so well known in aviation circles, and which was familiar to him through the book written about the young aviator’s hazardous and interesting experiences in the west under the title of “The Aeroplane Express.”

“And you’re goin’ to send it?” commented the captain.

“Right away!”

“Well,” exclaimed the man, laughing, “it is certainly a nervy thing to do. But, good luck to you.”

There was no poling the Valkaria that evening, and the sail home was full of joy to all. The next morning, work on the aeroplane was resumed with new vigor. The braced car now occupied so much of the shop that, each morning, Captain Anderson and Andy carried it out to the sandy river shore, where it rested all day on “horses,” that the two workmen might have the entire shop for their further work.

It had been vaguely planned that the starting and landing wheels would be wooden and handmade. But from the moment Captain Anderson read the letter to Roy Osborne and confronted the possibility of exhibiting his work to a professional, he became additionally ambitious. Early Monday morning, he telephoned to Titusville for three old bicycle wheels with mending kits and a pump.

“Everything is right but the wheels,” he explained. “And if she don’t work, we can’t afford to have it because we fell down on them.”

That day and the next, Andy worked on the wheel mechanism and the brake, while Captain Anderson was at last wholly occupied with the bird-tail guide. The most delicate work was required for the “heart” of the contrivance, as he called it, which was the thin tail pinions of wood, each of which had to be worked out like the blade of a propeller.

The week went by with no word from Roy Osborne. At first Captain Anderson was inclined to twit Andy about his letter. But when he saw how seriously the boy viewed his own presumption, the sympathetic boat builder ceased his joking.

“He might have answered my letter, at least,” Andy would say.

Each day Ba sailed to Melbourne for the mail, and each time he came back with no communication from Daytona.

“By Saturday she’ll be ready for the engine, I think,” said Captain Anderson in mid-week.

“I reckon so,” replied Andy, rather ruefully. “But there’s no use o’ puttin’ the engine in her as long as we’ve got to tote her in and out of the shop every day.”

“No,” exclaimed the captain, “we’ll go the limit. When we get that shaft rigging in and the chain drives and the propellers on, I want to see the engine hooked up to ’em. I want to see those wheels move, if we’ve got to tie her to the dock to keep her from flyin’ away. And we’ll fit on the rudder and the front balance, too, just to see what the whole thing looks like.”

“I’m goin’ to make her let me do it,” broke in Andy impulsively. “Mother won’t have the heart to refuse me when she sees it all out there ready to fly.”

The captain took a long puff at his pipe and laughed.

“Anyway,” he said slowly, “she looks like the real thing to me. If your mother’ll let you, go the limit. If she won’t fly, bust her. I don’t care.”