CHAPTER XXVI THE RACE

Judged by the theory they had worked out, the action of the men in the amphibian indicated that they were flying away with something they had found.

“If they had given up, so soon,” Dick mused, holding his head low to avoid the icy blast of their high position, “if they’d given up Jeff would go straight to the hangar again. But they’re going across Long Island Sound toward Connecticut, just as the unknown person in the hydroplane boat did with the other life preserver.”

Larry, holding speed at a safe flying margin so that the sustentation, or lifting power of the air, was greater than the drag of the airplane as it resisted the airflow, let the nose drop a trifle, let the engine rev down as he glided to a lower level where the air would not bite so much. They would be able to follow quite as well, dropping behind just enough to keep the line of distance between them as great as if they were higher and closer over the amphibian.
213

With his glasses, Dick could observe and indicate any change of direction or any other maneuver.

They had devised a hastily planned code of signals, very much like those used by a flying school instructor giving orders to a pupil where the Gossport helmet was not worn.

Dick, watchful and alert, lowered his chilled glasses and Sandy, keeping watch, saw his right arm extend straight out from his shoulder, laterally to the airplane’s course.

Sandy repeated the gesture after attracting Larry’s attention by a slight shaking of the dual-control rudder which was still attached, but which, on any other occasion, he had been careful not to touch.

“Left arm extended! Turn that way!” Larry murmured.

Gently he moved the stick to lower the left aileron, bringing up the right one, of course, by their mutual operation; rudder went left a trifle and in a safe, forty-five degree bank, he began to turn.
214

Almost instantly Dick again removed the chilly glasses, stuck his arm out ahead of him with his forearm and hand elevated, and motioned forward with the wrist and hand.

The signal was relayed by Sandy.

“Resume straight flight.”

Larry, getting the message correctly, reversed control, brought the airplane back to straight, level position on the new angle, and held it steady, revving up his engine and lifting the nose in a climb as Sandy gave him Dick’s sign, hand pointed straight upward, to climb.

“What in the world are they going to do?” he wondered.

“Have they discovered us?” Dick pondered the possibility.

“I can’t guess this one,” Sandy muttered. “They started to turn one way, then went on only a little off the old course, and now they’re coming up toward where we are.”

The problem was not answered, either by the continued gain in elevation or by the later change of plan.

“They’re gliding!”

Dick, as he made the exclamation, gestured with his arm toward the earth.
215

To Sandy’s signal Larry cut the gun, keeping the throttle open just enough to be sure the engine, in that chill air, would not stall, and with stick sent forward and then returned to neutral, imitated the gentle glide of the amphibian.

What it meant none of the three knew any better than did the half frozen caretaker who wished very sincerely that he had never come.

“Sandy! Sandy!” Dick cried as loudly as he could. “They’ve done a sharp turn—they’re going back home I think!”

Larry did not need to have the intricate signal relayed, nor did he wait to be told his passengers’ deduction. Their own maneuvers had given him a clue.

With the first change of direction and the following indecision that showed in the amphibian’s shifts of direction, Larry spelled a change of plan on the part of its occupants. The resulting glide, enabling his chums to speak above the idling noise of the engine, indicated a similar possibility in the other ship—Jeff and Mr. Whiteside were talking over plans.

He rightly decided that they had recalled sending the caretaker on a foolish errand. They must get back and make some explanation or he would suspect them, perhaps report to somebody else. They could not know that he was shivering, crouched down in the last place of Jeff’s own airplane.
216

Now for a race, Larry muttered, almost automatically moving the throttle wider as he prepared to alter their course.

It came to him, swiftly, that this would be both a race and a complication.

Not only must they get the airplane back to the golf course and set it down and have its engine still, themselves being hidden before Jeff flew over it. Furthermore, they must get to the hangar and be somewhere near the field when Jeff brought home the amphibian—or they would never know whether he and his companion had found anything or not.

Larry had to do a little rapid mental arithmetic.

To avoid being sighted and identified when passing the amphibian, the airplane must cut inland instead of making a beeline for the golf course.

“That would make the return to their objective form a rough letter “L” in the air.

However, at the far end of its flight the amphibian must turn inland a similar distance to fly over the golf fairway. That made the flying problem one of speed and not of distance traveled.
217

The airplane, selected for its wing-camber and span that gave it a low landing speed and good sustentation, was not fast.

The amphibian was even more slow.

“Distance to cover, seventy miles,” Larry pondered. “Our best speed, Jeff said, once, was about seventy miles an hour. The ‘phib’ does sixty, top.”

He made his calculation.

“No leeway to get to the hangar—Sandy might, barely, because he was on the track team, last school term. That is our only chance. But, at that, it will be ‘nip-and-tuck’!”

No air race can give the thrill of other forms of speed competition as does the horse race, the motor boat or sailing race, the track meet or the automobile speedway contests.

The distance is too great to permit spectators to observe it, the ships scatter, seek different elevations, or in other ways fail to keep that close formation which makes of the hundred-yard dash such a blood-stimulating incident.

The automobile contest generally follows a course where watchers have vantage points for gathering.

The sailboats or motor craft can be accompanied or seen through marine glasses.

To air pilots, of course, there is plenty of excitement.
218

It is their skill, their ability to take advantage of every bit of tailwind, their power to get the utmost of safe “go” out of engine, wings and tail assembly, that keeps them alert and decides the outcome.

So it was in Larry’s race, with Dick, Sandy and the caretaker.

It could not be watched or followed; but to the occupants of the ship it was a thrilling competition with the mystery element adding zest; and when, with a fair tailwind aiding him, Larry shot the improvised “field” of the ninth fairway, making sure at cost of one complete circuit that no one was there, playing, the thrill for them was not over.

Sandy caught Larry’s idea even before the airplane had taxied to its place, close to the original take-off.

“I’m off!” cried Sandy, coat flung aside, collar ripped away, as he leaped fleetly along the soft turf. Not waiting to observe his progress, Dick and Larry busied themselves getting the airplane tail around into the same position it had originally occupied.

The engine had long before been stopped.
219

From the air, to an observer who had no idea that his craft had been used, all should seem natural, Larry decided as he and Dick, with Sandy’s discarded garments, and with the caretaker ruefully grumbling, chose a place of concealment.

Already the drone of the amphibian came from the shore side of the field, and in a low, quick swing, followed by a zooming departure, Jeff and Mr. Whiteside passed overhead.

“Now,” Larry remarked, “it’s up to Sandy.”

“Yep!” Dick agreed. “And it will be a close thing for him.”

“If he does!” grunted the caretaker.

For the answer they had to wait till dark.