The Flying Boys in the Sky

The face was long and covered with a grizzled beard that reached well down on his breast. He had removed his buckskin gloves, crossed his legs, and placed one of the hand coverings in his lap, while he loosely grasped the other and idly flipped the first with it as he talked.

But his eyes were the most striking feature of the remarkable man. They were overhung by shaggy brows, were of a piercing black color, and glowed as if with fire. Their startling glare caused a sudden suspicion in the mind of Harvey Hamilton that the man was partially insane. At least, he must be the curious individual best described by the word “crank,” one whom much study and research had made mad. As is well known, such a person often succeeds in hiding his affliction from his friends, or gains the reputation of being simply eccentric.

“What is your name and why are you here?” he abruptly asked, still looking in the face of Harvey, who said he lived at Mootsport, something more than a hundred miles distant.

“I have started on an outing with my colored friend, without any particular destination in view; when we have had enough sport, we shall return. Who are you?” queried the youth, feeling warranted in asking a few equally pointed questions.

“My name is Milo Morgan; I have no special home, but stop where the notion takes me; my business is invention, as it relates to the aeroplane.”

“May I ask what improvements you have made, Professor?”

He hesitated a moment as if uncertain what to reply.

“Not half as many as I am sure of making in the near future. The rigging of a searchlight cannot be called an invention, for it has long been in common use on warships and others, and all aeroplanes are supplied with electricity. I have rigged up a wireless telegraph, so as to pick out messages from the air; I have succeeded in compounding a fluid which as I told you is ten times stronger than gasoline; I run without noise, and my uplifter will carry me vertically upward, as high as I care to go.”

“I should think you were blamed near the limit,” suggested Abisha Wharton, profoundly interested in what the Professor was saying.

“I have only begun; and I intend to justify the name of my monoplane.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“Because I haven’t spoken it, but when you have a daylight view of my machine you will see the name painted on the under side of the wings, ‘The Dragon of the Skies.’”

This was said with so much solemnity that Harvey had hard work to hide his smile. He no longer doubted that he was talking with a crank.

“Do you mind telling me what is the great object you have in view?”

“It is to build a machine that will keep afloat and travel at an average speed of sixty miles an hour, – probably greater. That will enable me to cross the Atlantic in a little more than two days and I shall have no difficulty in sailing to Asia or Africa.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE PROFESSOR TALKS ON AVIATION

The last remark of Professor Morgan threw Bohunkus Johnson into a state of excitement. He had obeyed Harvey and remained mute during the conversation, but he now addressed the visitor directly:

“Did yo’ say Afriky, boss?”

The man looked in his direction and nodded his head.

“That’s what I said, sir.”

“Dat’s where my fader libs.”

Harvey felt it his duty to explain:

“My colored friend claims to be the son of a distinguished African chief, whom he hopes to visit some day.”

“What is the name of the chief?” asked the Professor.

“His given name is the same as his; the full name is Bohunkus Foozleum.”

“I can’t say I ever heard of him,” remarked the Professor without cracking a smile.

“I sent him a letter a month ago, in de care ob Colonel Roosevelt and it’s ’bout time I got an answer. I’m sure de Colonel will call on him while he’s hunting in Afriky.”

“Well, when my machine is perfected, I’ll take you with me and it sha’n’t cost you a penny,” said Professor Morgan.

Bohunkus chuckled with delight and settled down to listen. The visitor now ignored him and addressed the others.

“Aviation is the theme that fills nearly all minds and it is daily growing in importance. The possibilities are boundless; it will revolutionize travel, social life and the methods of warfare. It will render the destruction of life and property so appallingly easy that no nation will dare array itself against another. You and I are likely to see that day when: —

“‘The war drum throbs no longer and the battle flags are furled
O’er the parliament of nations, o’er a reunited world.’

“We can remember the universality of the bicycle; then came, and it stays with us, the automobile, and now it is the aeroplane. The day is near when there will be numberless routes established between cities and countries and when the ocean will be crossed east and west by a procession of heavier-than-air machines, and every family will have its hangar and its occupant awaiting the wish of the owner.”

The Professor showed a disposition to quiz the young aviator, who met him as best he could, though sensible of his lack of knowledge as compared with one who had given so much thought and experimentation to it.

“Naturally,” said he, “men’s first ideas were of using wings as birds do, but it would take a Samson or a Hercules to put forth the necessary strength. But it has been tried times without number. I think the ancient Greeks wove many romantic tales of aerial flights – ”

The Professor paused and Harvey accepted the invitation:

“Such as Daedalus and Icarus, who were said to have flown to the sun and back again. The Greek Achytus made a dove of wood, driven by heated air, and one of his countrymen constructed a brass fly which kept above the ground for some minutes.”

“Do you recall what aviator first came to grief?”

“‘Simon the Magician,’ who during the reign of the emperor Nero made a short flight before a Roman crowd but tumbled to death, as did a good many during the Middle Ages.”

“The Chinese were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in the use of the mariner’s compass, printing, gunpowder and the flying of kites. There are authentic records of balloon flights in the fourteenth century, and a hundred years later discoveries were made of which present aviators have taken advantage. You have learned that although America was visited a thousand years ago and even earlier by white men, the glory of the discovery is given to Christopher Columbus. So the credit of the first real step in aviation belongs to two Frenchmen. Can you help me to recall their names?”

“I don’t think you need any help,” laughed Harvey, who saw the drift of his friend’s quizzing, “but the men you have in mind were Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, who lived at Annonay, about forty miles from Lyons.”

“What was their idea of aerostation?”

“They learned from many experiments that a light globe filled with hot air will rise because its weight is less than the surrounding atmosphere, just as a cork or bit of pine comes to the surface of water. They made a globular ball, thirty-five feet in diameter, of varnished silk, and in June, 1783, in the presence of an immense crowd at Annonay built a fire under the mouth on the lower side. Soon after when the ropes were loosened, the balloon mounted upward for more than a mile, then was carried to one side by a current of air and as the vapor within cooled, came gently down to earth again.

“The incident caused a sensation and Paris subscribed money for manufacturing hydrogen, a very buoyant gas to take the place of hot air. The brothers sent up such a balloon in Paris in the latter part of August. It sailed aloft for half a mile, finally drifted out of sight and came down fifteen miles from the starting point.”

“Did it carry any passenger?” asked the Professor.

“No; the time had not come for that venture, but soon after the brothers sent up a second hot air balloon at Versailles, in the presence of the king and queen. A wicker cage was suspended below and in it were a duck, a rooster and a sheep, all of which showed less excitement than the cheering thousands. It rose about a fourth of a mile, and eight minutes after leaving the ground descended two miles away.”

“Who was the first man to go up in a balloon?” asked Abisha Wharton.

“I don’t remember his name; can you tell me, Professor?”

“Pilatre de Rozier, whose ascent was made on the 15th of October, 1783, in an oval balloon constructed by the Montgolfiers. It was not quite fifty feet in diameter and half again as high. A circular wicker basket was suspended beneath, and under the neck of the balloon in the center was an iron grate or brazier supported by chains, the whole structure weighing sixteen hundred pounds. M. de Rozier fed the flames with straw and wood and thus kept the air sufficiently heated to lift him eighty-four feet, where held by ropes, the balloon remained suspended for four and a half minutes and then gently came back to earth.