CHAPTER XIV DICK HANDLES A CONTROL JOB

Flying close to three thousand feet above Oyster Bay, level and stable, the airplane seemed to be in perfect condition.

Jeff, for all his superstition, would have given it as a pilot’s opinion that only some mistake on Larry’s part, or a quitting engine, leaving them with a dead stick, could cause danger.

Just the same the unexpected happened!

“There’s where President Roosevelt lies,” Dick, in the last seat, because their places were rearranged by Larry’s position as pilot, indicated to Sandy, just ahead of him, the cemetery beneath them.

Very tiny, in its iron fenced enclosure, the last resting place of a national idol, was almost invisible with its simple headstone; but Dick’s statement was understood by Sandy to mean the location more than the exact spot.

“I’ll get Jeff to ask Larry to spiral down for a better look,” Sandy decided.

He transmitted the suggestion.
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“Sandy wants to see President Roosevelt’s place in the cemetery,” Jeff spoke into the tube of the Gossport helmet Larry still used.

“There it is, just off our left wing, buddy. That’s right—stick goes to the left and a touch of left rudder, but when you moved the stick sidewise to adjust the ailerons you neglected that-there bit of forward movement to tip us down into a glide. Remember, it’s the double use of the stick that works ailerons and elevators both.”

Larry had overlooked that point for the instant. It was his only difficulty in flying, to recollect always to control all the different movements together. The joystick, operating the wing-flap ailerons by the left-or-right, lateral movement, also raised or depressed the elevators by forward-or-backward movement. However, in any lateral position, the forward and backward set of the stick worked the elevators and in executing a control maneuver, even as simple as going into a bank combined with a turning glide, or downward spiral, the movement of the stick should be both slightly sidewise, for sufficient bank, and, with the same movement, slightly forward, for depressing the nose into a glide, returning the stick from slightly forward back to neutral to avoid over-depressing the nose into too steep a glide; if not put back in neutral when the right angle was attained, the depressed elevators would continue to turn the forward part of the craft more steeply downward.
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“Not too steep, Larry. Back with the stick.”

Just at the instant that Larry was about to obey Jeff’s instruction a gust of air, coming up warm, tilted the lifted wing more, and as he corrected for that, trying to get the wing up and the nose higher for a flatter spiral, his movement was a little too sharp, and the sensitive controls, working perfectly, but too sharply handled, sent the craft into an opposite bank, rolling it like a ship in the trough of a sidewise wave.

Also, Larry meant to try to draw the stick backward at the same time, coordinating both corrections; but Jeff, a little less calm than usual because of the superstitious fears that kept riding him, neglected to speak the words by which he would inform Larry that he was “taking over” until the correction was made.

By that neglect, both drew back on the stick at the identical instant, and the nose came up much too sharply.
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Larry, not aware that Jeff meant to handle the job, almost pulled the stick away from Jeff in his anxiety to get the nose down again, and Dick, in the last seat, thought he felt a sort of thud.

“Hands off! I’ll take over!” Jeff said tardily.

He drew back on the stick for, with the throttle rather wide—because Larry had feared a stall as the nose went up and had thrust the throttle control sharply forward—the craft began to go down in a very steep glide, not quite a dive, but with engine on full gun, sending it in a sharp angle toward earth.

Naturally, when he pulled back on the stick and it did not yield, Jeff shouted through the speaking tube, “Let go!” for he thought Larry had lost his head and was fighting his control.

Larry was not doing anything. He had removed his hand from the stick, his feet merely touched the rudder bar.

Jeff called out something.

They did not realize his words, but Sandy saw his expression.

Almost as though he had been able to hear, Sandy knew Jeff’s idea.

“The jinx has got us.”

Jeff cut the gun swiftly, and came out of the bank pointed toward the wide, shimmering waters of Oyster Bay.

“What’s the matter?” Larry swung his head to call back.
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“Stick’s jammed!” Jeff grunted through the tube.

“Jammed?”

“Stuck. It won’t come back. It’s the jinx! Hoodoo! We’re heading down for the bay and I can’t get the nose up!”

Dick, from the back place, saw Jeff struggling with the stick.

If he did not hear, at least his flying study informed him that something had gone amiss.

Equally, his quick mind arrived at a good guess at the trouble.

The only reason Jeff would swing toward the water and give up working with the stick must be that the stick would not operate the elevators.

And that, to Dick, spelled disaster.

Its speed accelerated at the start by the engine the airplane picked up speed rapidly because its nose was steadily going down.

Jeff tugged madly again.

The stick, part of an installed auxiliary control for instruction work, snapped out of its bed.

Jeff flung it disgustedly out to the side.

Larry sat quietly, knowing well that in no time they would be diving toward a wet, deep bay—and the end!
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Sandy, not fully aware of the situation, but tense, thought of his ’chute, in the seat-pack. Would there be time? Could he use it? He waited, watching Jeff and Larry.

None of the three noticed Dick.

Seconds counted, he knew.

If the stick was jammed, it might be possible to get into the fuselage. There he might operate the elevator cable by hand enough to get that nose up more, flatten the glide, maybe enough to enable Larry, who alone had a stick, to swing around and come down on land—somehow.

A crack-up would not be as bad, perhaps, as a plunge, a dive into the bay!

Before his mind flashed the recollection that in construction plans he had seen provision for getting into the after part of the fuselage.

Not wasting a second, he was already free from his safety belt, climbing with agile quickness for all his plumpness, onto the fuselage.

It was a fearful risk.

Their speed sent them through the air so fast that the wind was a gale there on the unprotected top fabric of the fuselage.

With his cotton-stuffed ears tortured by the pressure, with the fierce wind tearing at him, Dick clutched the seat top as he tore away the fabric flap covering a sort of manhole back of his place.
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Headfirst he plunged in, scrambling, instantly beginning to seek the points where the control cables passed through channeled guides at each side.

He was in a dark, stuffy, closely confined and narrow space, his legs hanging out in the roaring gale, unable to see, half suffocated by the fumes collected in that restricted area.

He found a cable with exploring hands.

He tugged at it.

It was slack. That told his feverishly acute intelligence that it was the cable whose lever did not operate. He had seen that Jeff, when he flung the stick forward to try to free it, had been able to pull it back again without operating the elevators.

Almost as his hand touched the cable and twitched at it, his other hand, as he lay with his weight on his chin, face and chest, contacted something else—a large, roundish object, feeling like a spare landing wheel tire.

He knew as though the light photographed the truth to his eyes, that this tire-like object had moved, shifted, fallen onto the cable, wedging it.

Instantly Dick pushed it into the center of the small space.

Gripping the cable, he twitched it sharply once—twice—three times!
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In the dark, he did not know how close the water was. He could not tell if his alertness had been able to give back the use of the elevators in time.

Larry, his hand idly on the useless stick, felt it twitch three times.

Automatically he tested it. It came back, and the nose began to come up a trifle. He did not dare over-control. He had learned that lesson!

The water was rushing up at them—but the stick—might——

Seconds to go!

He must not drag the ship out of that dive too swiftly—a wing might be torn off.

But with his nerves taut, by sheer power of his cool will forcing himself to work steadily but not sharply, he brought the nose up, closing his eyes to that wild nightmare of water seeming to be leaping toward the airplane.

Jeff shut his eyes. Then he opened them again. No use to try a jump, no use to do anything but be ready if——

Sandy braced himself.

The airplane was flattening out!

Larry was operating the stick!

The nose came up steadily—with a fraction of time to the good, they began to come out of the glide to level flight.
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Larry braced himself against the slap of the wheels into the surface water. That might offer just enough resistance to nose them in.

He must be ready to open the throttle and pull up the nose—but he must not do it too soon, or do it at all in his strained, excited state—he might go too far.

Level! The airplane skimmed, it seemed to Larry, inches above the slightly ruffled water.

Gently he drew back the stick, opening the throttle carefully.

“Golly-to-gosh!” he muttered, “that was close——”

When he had lifted the craft and headed for home, he glanced back.

Two legs waved over the last cockpit place.

And in that ridiculous position Dick, a hero upside down, came to earth at the end of Sandy’s birthday flight—on the thirteenth, a Friday, as Jeff, white and shaken, hastened to remind them.

“But you sure done some swell control job,” he told Dick.

“Thanks,” Dick retorted, without smiling.

He turned to Larry.

“You did the trick, Larry,” he declared. “I only loosened the cables—freed them——”
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“What made them jam, I wonder?” mused Sandy.

“The jinx!”

Dick turned on Jeff.

“Yes,” he said very quietly for him. “The jinx! The hoodoo. I think it’s broken, though—in fact, I know it is.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Dick began to chuckle, “I’ve thought of a sure way to break it.”

“How?” Jeff was regaining his color and his curiosity.

But Dick grinned and shook his head.

He knew the answer to the puzzle of the missing emeralds!