CHAPTER XII THE HOODOOED AIRPLANE

After their exciting day, the next two weeks proved more than dull to the youthful members of the Sky Patrol.

Nothing happened to clear up the mystery.

To the surprise of the yacht crew, Captain Parks kept them all busy preparing, the day after Mrs. Everdail’s dramatic discovery, for a run to Bar Harbor, Maine.

That was unusual. After a trip across the Atlantic, the yacht was ordinarily laid up for awhile, giving its crew some shore liberty.

Captain Parks, however, agreed with Mr. Everdail, who trusted him absolutely—if Sandy did not—that it would be wise not to give any person who had been on the yacht during its crossing any chance to get away.

“On the run,” Mr. Everdail told Sandy and Dick, “and while we lay over at Bar Harbor, you two can watch for anything suspicious. My wife won’t let me say that Mimi, the maid, could be guilty—besides, how could she get into Captain Parks’ safe?”
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“I think, myself, some man of the crew would be the one to watch,” Dick agreed. “Maybe the steward, who could have a reason for getting into the captain’s quarters.”

“But it was a woman Larry saw, through the glasses, at the stern,” Sandy objected.

“Well, then—there’s the stewardess who attends to the ladies’ cabins,” argued Dick. “We can watch her.”

They did, but no one on board asked for shore leave, either on the day before lifting anchor or during the stay in the Maine waters. Dick and Sandy used ears and eyes alertly; but nothing suspicious looking rewarded their vigilance.

Larry, staying at the old estate home with Jeff, had some compensation, at least, for being separated from his chums. Not only could he keep an eye on things and be ready if Jeff called for an aide; as well, he had his daily instruction in ground school and in the air.

Already “well up” on all that books could tell about engines, types of airplanes, construction methods, rigging and even handling a craft in the air, he got the practical personal experience that is the only real teacher, and the thrill of donning the Gossport helmet, with its ear ’phones and speaking tube through which Jeff, in the second place of the amphibian or the airplane, instructed him, correcting faults or gave hints, was a real thrill.
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He learned, first of all, not to start up an engine while the tail of the ship pointed toward a hangar, or other open building, or toward a crowd, in future, on a field.

The propeller blast threw a torrent of dust and as Jeff told him, he mustn’t become that most unpopular of airport nuisances, a “dusting pilot,” whose carelessness flung damaging clouds on airplanes in hangars and people on the fields.

Learning to warm up the engine, to check up on instruments, to keep the ship level while taxiing down the field to head into the wind, to make the turn, either in stiff wind or gentle breeze, so that the wind did not tip the craft and scrape wingtips—these and a dozen other things he acquired in several early lessons.

The second place of the airplane had been fitted with a set of dual controls, rudder bar, throttle and “joystick” so that Jeff, for two successive hops, let Larry put feet on his rudder bar and lightly hold the stick as Jeff manipulated the controls and explained, by use of the Gossport helmet, why he did this or that.
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Jeff believed, as does every good instructor, that showing, and explaining, is necessary as a first step, but that a flyer is developed only by practice during which he makes mistakes and is told why they are mistakes and how to correct them, thus gaining confidence and assurance by actually flying.

“That-there time,” Jeff might say, “when the caretaker ‘playing mechanic’ and pulling down the prop till the engine catches, didn’t you open up the throttle too wide? Better to open it just enough to give the engine gas to carry along on—and even cut the gun a bit more to let it run fairly slow till it warms up. Turning her up to full eighteen hundred revs don’t gain while she’s cold, and it throws dust like sin!”

Or, as Larry taxied, learning to manage speed on the ground by use of wider throttle for more speed, cutting down the gas if the craft began going too fast, he would catch an error:

“Did you forget last time to put the stick back and make the blast on the elevators hold the tail down while we taxi? Sure, you did—but you won’t again, because you saw that if you didn’t we might nose over. You ‘over-controlled’, too, and almost nosed over before you caught it—and then, we were going so fast I don’t know what kept this-here crate from starting to hop.
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“That’s right—easy movements always—don’t jerk the controls—take it fairly easy. And you are doing right to move the stick back to neutral this time when the tail came up—kick rudder a bit, isn’t she slanting to the right? That’s it, buddy, left rudder and back, and now the right rudder—there she is, headed right.”

Mostly, Larry caught his own mistakes in time.

Ordinarily cool-headed, he had to be told only once or twice, and reminded almost never that jerky manipulation of the controls was not good practice or helpful to their evolutions. Easy movements, continual alertness and a cool head stood him in good stead.

Seeing those fine qualities, Jeff had Larry thrilling and happy on the fourth day by letting the youthful enthusiast for aviation take over for a simple control job, straight, level flying.

“You’ll want to get the feel of the air, and see how stable the average modern crate is,” Jeff spoke through the Gossport tube. “How does that-there wing look to you—kind of dropping?—remember what I did—that’s the stuff, stick to the left a bit and back to neutral, so the other wing won’t drop! No use teetering back and forth. They put neutral position into a control so you can set ailerons or rudder or elevators where you want them and hold them.”
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There was more than Larry had ever dreamed there would be to keep in mind: there was the maintaining of level flight; even in his simplest personal contact with the controls; then there was the job of keeping the horizon line at the right location by watching past a chosen spot on the engine cowling, else they would start to climb or go into a glide. There was the real horizon to distinguish from the false horizon, which an airman knows is, through some trick of the air, the visible horizon that is just a little bit above the true horizon, so that to hold level flight in a forward direction, that false horizon is not held on a line with the top of the engine cowling, but, to hold a line with the true horizon the marking point is held just a trifle below that false, visible horizon line.
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Had that been all he had to comprehend Larry’s first control job would have been simple. There was much more to watch—the tachometer, to keep track of engine speed; the air speed was learned by watching the indicator on the wing of that particular type of airplane; the position of the nose with relation to the horizon had to be constantly noted and a tendency to rise or lower had to be corrected: little uprushes or warm air made the airplane tilt a trifle to one side or the other and ailerons had to be used to bring it back, the stick had to be returned to neutral gently at exactly the point of level flight after such correction and not sent to the other side or the craft tipped the other way and opposite aileron had to be applied; then there was the chosen point such as a church steeple, tall tree or other landmark selected as a point on the course to hold the nose on—that must be watched and a touch of rudder given if the craft deviated from its straight line.

Nevertheless, complicated as flying appeared to be on that first handling of joystick, rudder and throttle, Larry knew that the happiest time of his life would be his first successful solo hop, and that the complicated look of the maneuvers and the number of things to watch—level flight, direction, maintaining flying speed, seeing that altitude was maintained, that his own craft was not menacing or menaced by any other in the air, all these would become simple, second nature as soon as the flying hours piled up and gave him more skill and experience.

Morning and afternoon Jeff took him up.

Quick to learn, retentive of memory, not repeating the same mistakes—even working out some points for himself—Larry, at the end of the fifth day, was gratified to have Jeff, as he slipped off the Gossport, tell him:
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“The only trouble about this-here instruction is that I’m scared you’re going to make a better pilot than your teacher.”

“Oh, thanks—but I never could be any better than you, Jeff.”

“Yes, you can,” the older man’s face became doleful. “You ain’t the kind to let that-there superstition bug bite you.”

“No,” admitted his pupil. “I think superstition is just believing something somebody else tells you until you are so busy watching out for something to go wrong that you aren’t ‘right on the job’ with your own work—or you are so busy waiting for some good thing to ‘happen’ that you don’t see Opportunity when it comes up because you’re not watching Opportunity—you’re watching Luck, or Omens.”

“Don’t I know it!” Jeff was rueful. “I want to kick myself sometimes—but when you know other folks has had their crates ‘jinxed’ by being in the same hangar with one that has got the name for being hoodooed—what would you do?”

“Just what I’m doing now,” Larry grinned. “I know Mr. Everdail paid the company for the ruined seaplane and moved it into the hangar, here. I know your airplane almost touches it, every night. But I don’t let that worry me, because——”
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“Well, it worries me. I try not to let it, but the worry is there, no matter what I do. You see, I never thought, out in the marsh, about anything going wrong because I took that big wrench and put it in my tool kit after we salvaged it out of the water. But I dreamt about emeralds, last night, and so I went to a fortune teller gypsy woman and she told me a dream like that meant bad luck in business, and so I said I was a pilot and told her all about the seaplane——”

“You ought to be careful,” Larry interrupted. “If she puts two-and-two together, emeralds and a chase and a wrecked seaplane——”

“Oh, she was too busy talking to listen that close.”

“They’re awfully quick—the way they guess what’s in your mind proves that.”

“Oh, she won’t think anything about it. Anyhow, she told me not on any chance to touch that cracked up seaplane or anything that ever was on it—and so—I put the jinx on my own crate without meaning to.”

“I’m still willing to learn in it.”

“Well—I don’t know—it worries me.”

“It doesn’t bother me, Jeff.”

And it didn’t, for several more busy days.