Joe Strong and his wings of steel

“Too bad, Joe!” exclaimed Mr. Brader. “What seems to be the trouble?”

The former circus performer shook his head.

“I can’t tell yet,” he answered. “The main thing seems to be that the motors aren’t powerful enough, and that means the storage battery isn’t strong enough.”

“But she went up, Joe. Couldn’t you give her more current?”

“I gave her all I could, and burned out a safety fuse. That was what made it fall back. The current failed when the fuse went out. I hope nothing was smashed.”

A hasty examination of the Bat showed that there were several slight breaks but that they could easily be fixed. The main trouble was that the wings of steel were not powerful enough to lift Joe, even if they would raise and fly the machine itself.

Joe readjusted the mechanism, put in a new fuse, changed the tilt of the rudders slightly and rearranged the wiring that led from the batteries to the motors so as to give them slightly more current. But this did no good. The Bat rose slightly, it is true, but the pull exerted, as shown on the scale, was but forty pounds.

“Something sure is wrong,” Joe declared despondently. “I’ve got to make some changes.”

He began work that very day, taking out the motors to see if they could be made more powerful. As this class of work was not done in the circus apparatus factory, Joe had to go to New York, to a concern that made a specialty of small motors.

There he received another setback, for he was told that the motors he had were the most powerful that could be made and keep within the weight he had specified.

“Then we’ll have to increase the weight,” Joe decided, “and I’ll have to make the wings larger to exert more lifting power. Can it be done?”

“Well, perhaps,” said the head engineer of the motor concern. “By using a different kind of metal which is lighter but stronger than that which we did use, we may be able to get a more powerful motor and, at the same time, not add much to your burden.”

“I wish you would,” said Joe.

“It’s going to be rather expensive, though.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose,” remarked Joe. But the setback had come at a bad time for him, since his money was going fast, and that which he had counted on getting from the English estate was tied up.

“And I may lose it altogether,” Joe said. “I don’t wish any trouble to the heir who is making all this fuss, but if he would just drop out of sight long enough for me to get the balance due me, I’d appreciate it. I think I’ll write to Mr. Craige and see if he can’t get the syndicate lawyer to take up the case again. He put it through before ‘with bells on’, as the boys say. If he’d handle my case I’m sure there wouldn’t be such a delay. This Mr. Kent Bolling may be all right, but I don’t like the way he acts.”

Writing letters concerning his English money, and paying visits every day to the motor factory, Joe put in a busy two weeks. Occasionally he heard from Helen, writing pleasant letters in response to her chatty ones. But he was not able to run over to the circus when it showed in Millville, as he was in New York at the time. Work on the motors was proceeding slowly, and Joe had to draw his bank account down pretty low to meet the necessary expenses.

“If worst comes to worst I might climb the Flatiron Building again,” mused Joe as he passed the structure at Broadway and Fifth Avenue one day. He recalled the time when he had done this for a moving picture concern, and remembered that he had been paid a goodly sum for it.

“And I might see if they want me to do some more wire-riding with my motor-cycle,” the boy continued to muse. “I don’t want to take up that again unless I must, but if my Bat isn’t going to be a success I may have to.”

The motors were finally completed and Joe shipped them to the Brader factory, writing that he would be there soon himself to superintend the attaching of them to his wings of steel.

“And if they aren’t successful this time, I don’t know what I shall do,” thought the youth, a bit despondently.

It was nearly two weeks before the queer machine could be so changed as to make the new motors fit. The wings were also made larger by several square feet of surface.

“That ought to give lifting power enough to pull up two chaps like me,” said Joe. “I’m going to try to increase the size of the battery, too, in order to get more current.”

Once more the test was arranged for, and to make sure that it would be a fair one the young experimenter put inside the cage a weight more than equal to his own.

“If the wings lift that they’ll lift me,” he said.

The controlling wire was to be used as before, as were also the rope and the pull-registering scale.

There was an anxious look on Joe’s face as he took his position with the electrical switch in his hand. He, and Mr. Brader also, had gone carefully over every part of the wings, and there seemed to have been left undone nothing that could make for success.

“All ready, Joe?” asked the apparatus manufacturer.

“Yes,” the boy answered. “Here she goes once more.”

There was a click as Joe pressed the switch, and at once there arose a low humming from the motors.

“That sounds better!” cried Mr. Brader.

“Yes, we’ve got more power this time,” the lad said. There was a hopeful look on his face.

The big wings began to beat up and down. Faster and faster they went, until the breeze they created could be felt at some distance away, and one man’s hat was blown off.

“Feed the current slowly, Joe,” advised Mr. Brader.

“That’s what I’m doing. I don’t want to burn out any more fuses. But I’m using a heavier one this time.”

Faster went the wings, and those looking closely could see the Bat lift a little way from the ground.

“She’s going up!” eagerly cried one of the workmen.

“Don’t be too sure,” cautioned Joe. He did not want another disappointment.

Slowly he pushed around the graduated electrical switch, each segment over which the copper connection passed allowing more and more current to flow into the motors.

Faster vibrated the wings up and down, their motions being almost identical with those of the weird animal after which the wings of steel were named.

At last, when the final bit of energy was flowing through the motors which were now humming and whining, the queer machine arose suddenly from the ground. It went higher than on the occasion of the first test, and Joe, glancing at the scale, noted a pull of thirty-five pounds.

“I think that will do the trick!” he exclaimed. “If it pulls that much with a weight in it equal to me, I ought to be able to fly all right. I believe it’s a success!”

But the young experimenter spoke too soon. Suddenly there was a flash of fire in the motor compartment of the Bat. Then came a sharp report and a puff of smoke. The machine settled back to the ground with a crash.

“What was that?” cried Mr. Brader.

“One of the motors has burned out,” said Joe despondently. “I guess I used too heavy a safety fuse. Well, it’s all off now.”

The smell of burning insulation filled the air, and Joe quickly shut off the current to prevent a similar accident in the other motor. The Bat was not damaged by the drop, as it was a slight one, and Joe, profiting by his first experience, had put springs in the bottom to take up the shock.

“Well, I guess it’s a failure,” the youth went on. “These are the best motors I could get, and if they won’t stand the strain nothing will. I’m going to quit—at least for a time.”

Mr. Brader, who had never been very sanguine as to the success of the wings of steel, did not try to change the lad’s mind. He felt that it was a waste of money to build such a machine.

And, though he did not say so, Joe had spent all he could afford.

“I’ve got to go to work and earn more,” he said to himself, as he gave orders to have the Bat stored in the factory.

“I’ll try to think up a new way of applying the power,” he said.

“Then you aren’t giving up for good?” asked Mr. Brader.

“No, indeed.”

Joe’s plans were unsettled for the next few days. He did not know just what to do, but, in a measure, the matter was decided for him. A letter came to him from his friend, Jim Tracy, the circus ring-master.

“Joe,” wrote one of the owners of the Sampson Brothers’ Show, “I wish you could see your way to come back to us. We are playing to better business now, and I want to make good with the public. We miss your high-wire act. Can you come on and join the show? Let your wings of steel go for the present.”

“I guess he doesn’t know what happened to them,” said Joe, with a grim smile.

Then he began to think seriously of what Jim Tracy had written. Here was an unexpected way out of his financial difficulties.

“I could go with the show for the season and earn enough to have another essay at my wings,” the youth reflected. “There must be something wrong with them. I may have to hire an expert aeroplanist to look them over. I could do that. Yes, I think I’ll go back to the circus again.”

He telegraphed his determination to the ring-master, and a week later Joe was again under canvas.