Joe Strong and his wings of steel

“This is where you’ve been hiding yourself, is it, Joe?”

“Yes, I’ve been practically living here for the last month or so, supervising my new machine, Benny. Come in and I’ll show it to you. And you too, Bill. You may be interested.”

“Does it work?” asked the man addressed as Bill, a stout, good-natured looking, and jolly individual, who, accompanied by a youth, had called at a certain factory to see Joe Strong.

“Work? Well, I hope it will, Bill,” answered Joe. “But it isn’t in shape for trial yet. I hope to have it completed, or nearly so, in a week. Then I’ll give you a real exhibition.”

“You’re great on exhibitions,” returned Benny Turton, laughing.

“Yes, I like ’em,” admitted Joe with a smile. “But come in. Mr. Brader has about given me the run of his factory, and I can take you all through, though I guess you’ve seen most of the stuff here.”

“Yes, circus apparatus isn’t new to either of us,” said Bill Watson, who was a veteran clown. “But we’re interested in your new machine, Joe.”

Joe Strong, who on hearing that his two friends from the Sampson Brothers’ Show, where he had formerly performed, would be in the neighborhood where the new apparatus was being made, had invited them to come to see it, and they had taken advantage of his offer.

Led by Joe, Bill and Benny followed through the big factory, which was a humming hive of industry, for Mr. Brader was one of the largest manufacturers of circus apparatus in the country.

Joe unlocked a door and admitted his friends to a room partitioned off from the main part of the factory.

“The men aren’t working on my machine just at present,” he said. “We had to send off to get certain parts, and there’s a delay. But it is so nearly completed that you can get an idea of what it will do. Here she is!”

He threw open the door, and for a moment neither Ben nor Bill said anything. They just stood looking at the queer machine.

Finally Bill asked:

“What’s it for?”

“Flying,” answered Joe.

“Humph!” mused the veteran clown. “You’ll break your neck, Joe Strong, if you try to fly with wings like that. Don’t risk it!”

“That’s right, Joe,” chimed in Benny Turton. “I don’t know what this machine is, but you sure do take too many risks. Your trapeze work was bad enough——”

“But it wasn’t anything to the way he rode his motor-cycle on the high wire,” put in Bill. “And now he’s going to do something even more dangerous.”

Joe regarded his friends with smiling face.

“You’re not giving me a chance to explain,” he said. “I don’t believe my wings of steel will be any more dangerous than riding the motor-cycle on the high wire was.”

“Wings of steel, eh? Is that what you call them?” asked Benny Turton.

“Yes, that’s as good a name as any, and if you’ll come closer and look you’ll see that the wings are really of light sheet steel, almost as thin as paper, but very strong. Take a look.”

The two visitors came closer to the queer apparatus. They saw a sort of cage, made of metal and of leather thongs. On either side of this cage extended a bat-like wing of thin curved steel, as thin almost, according to Joe, as a sheet of paper. But the wing was braced and reinforced by spreading ribs of metal, as the bones of a bat’s wing hold that membrane extended.

The wings were hinged to the middle frame, and as Joe touched the thin leaves of metal they rose and fell at his touch, creating a little breeze in the workroom.

“Is that how it operates?” asked the clown. “Are you going to work the wings up and down by your hands and arms?”

“No, indeed,” Joe answered. “I couldn’t get enough power that way. Here is what operates them.”

He showed his friends two spaces down in the lower part of the framework.

“Powerful storage batteries of a new type are to go in there,” Joe explained. “And they operate motors which will vibrate the wings up and down.”

“Then you’re really going to fly like a bird?” asked Ben.

“Well, I hope to. Of course I can’t be sure about it until I make the test. I’m waiting now for the motors. They have been delayed, but I expect them in about a week, and then I’ll make a trial flight.”

“Going to invite us to see it?” asked Bill.

“I’ll be glad to have you come,” said Joe.

The old clown shook his head.

“I like you too much, Joe, to see you smashed to pieces,” said the veteran laugh-maker. “I guess I’ll stay away.”

“I won’t be dashed to pieces,” declared Joe. “The trouble is going to be—if there is any—in going up, not in coming down.”

“How do you make that out?” asked Ben. “I thought the descent was where the most trouble was in flying stunts. As the Irishman said, it wasn’t the falling that hurt, it was the stopping that made all the mischief.”

Joe laughed.

“I don’t believe I’ll have that trouble,” he said. “As I told you, I’ll be all right if I can make my wings of steel raise me from the ground. Then even if my motor should stop unexpectedly I would just have to glide down as a bird soars.”

“Oh, that’s why you feel you won’t be hurt,” said the clown; “your wings of steel will be like a parachute.”

“Something, yes,” conceded Joe. “So you needn’t have any fear of coming to see me perform.”

“Well, under that condition I’ll come,” agreed Bill, and Benny said he would also.

“This must be costing something,” observed the clown. “They can’t make single machines like this for a few dollars.”

“It is costing me a pretty penny,” said Joe. “But it’s an idea I’ve long had in mind, and I wanted to carry it out.

“I’ve put a large part of what I got from my mother’s estate in England into this machine, and I expect to put in more when I get the rest of what is coming to me. That will be along soon, and I’ll just about need it. This experimenting eats up cash. I had to have everything made to order. There wasn’t a single thing I needed carried in stock.

“It was while I was riding my motor-cycle in the circus one day that I got my idea of wings of steel,” Joe went on to explain. “I thought how fine it would be if I could glide like a bird.”

“Why didn’t you get an aeroplane?” asked Bill. “They’re quite common now—almost as common as automobiles, and there are even schools where they teach one to fly.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Joe. “They’re too common. There isn’t enough of novelty about them. I wanted something that would draw a big crowd.”

“Then you’re going to give exhibitions with your wings of steel—I mean public exhibitions?” asked Benny Turton.

“I hope to.”

“And will you come back to the circus?” asked Bill.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Joe slowly. “I can’t tell what I’m going to do until I find out if my machine is going to be a success. That’s the main point.”

“Let’s see how you look inside it,” suggested Ben, and Joe took his position within the queer framework, and slipped his arms into loops on the underside of the wings of steel.

“I can move them by hand power, just to give you an idea how they work,” he said, as he vibrated the big wings, and a breeze came, so strong that it blew off the clown’s straw hat.

“Say, you’ve got some power there, Joe!” the laugh-maker commented.

“I’ll need it,” asserted the young inventor. “It’s going to be no easy task to raise me and the machine off the earth. Once we’re up, though, the gliding motion will sustain me, just as a thin sheet of tin will scale through the air.

“You see I can steer myself by working one wing faster than the other, for each one will have a separate motor. I also have a small rudder down here, or, rather, two rudders. I control them with my feet. One is for steering from side to side, and the other is the elevation rudder. By deflecting it one way I can go up, and by reversing it I glide down.”

“It sounds easy,” said Ben, but there was doubt in his tone.

“Joe, you sure have ideas,” commented Bill. “But I wouldn’t take the risks you do—not for a good many thousand dollars!”

“Well, if this thing works right, I’ll be a good many thousand dollars in pocket,” Joe said. “I’ll take in big money by going about the country giving real flying exhibitions—not circling around in an airship or an aeroplane—though they’re wonderful enough; I don’t mean to say anything against them.

“But my wings of steel will be different. I want to resemble a big bird as nearly as I can, and I think therein will be the great novelty.”

“Yes, it will be novel all right,” admitted Bill.

Joe then gave a further demonstration of his queer apparatus—that is, as good a demonstration as he could under the circumstances. The two visitors looked at it on all sides, but neither one had very much faith in Joe’s plan.

“You’d better stick to the motor-cycle,” said Benny Turton. “As for me, the tank where I play a human fish is good enough for me.”

Joe crawled out of the framework, and pointed out some other mechanical appliances on his apparatus. As he was locking the workroom preparatory to accompanying his two friends outside, a messenger handed him a letter.

“Ha! Maybe this is what I’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Word of the motors being completed.”

Then, as he looked at the stamp and saw a foreign one on the envelope, he said:

“Why, this is from England! I guess they’re sending me the rest of my money. Well, it will come in handy.”

He opened the letter quickly. A hasty glance through the contents caused Joe to utter an exclamation; and it was not one of joy.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bill Watson.

“Bad news,” replied Joe quietly. “Very bad!”