The Bird boys

“Wake up, Andy! It’s long past sun-up!”

“How’s the weather out there?” asked a sleepy voice from under the blanket that covered the cot.

“Fair enough, but from the little fleecy white clouds I see I’m afraid we’re going to have a lot more breeze than yesterday,” replied Frank, who was washing his face in the tin basin outside.

“Shucks! that would be too mean for anything, just when we’ve got everything tuned up for our great trial spin,” and the grumbler rolled out of his bed, after which he disentangled himself from the blankets and made for the door, to take an observation on his own account.

“It’s quiet enough just now to go up,” he announced, eagerly.

“All right, suppose you make the try. Reckon you’d wish you had some more clothes on before you got very high. This traveling through the air is hardly suited to pajamas as a regular thing,” jeered Frank.

“Oh, well!” Andy went on, his natural good nature coming to the rescue; “there’ll be plenty of chances for our first voyage over the fields. And meanwhile I’ll have an opportunity to look in several places I’ve thought of.”

“For that wrench, I suppose you mean?” said Frank. “Well, I hope you find it soon or there’ll be no living with you. I never saw such a fellow to harp on one tune. You must have been dreaming about it.”

“I have,” replied the other, promptly and unblushingly. “That’s what gave me an idea. It wouldn’t be the first lost thing that was found through the medium of a dream, either. I was reading only the other day——”

But just then he had to duck, when Andy tossed the contents of the basin in his direction, so it was never really known what strange thing he had read.

After they had partaken of breakfast the two boys pottered around. Frank’s prediction had proven only too true. With the advancing sun had come a breeze that, while at no time bordering on the character of a hurricane, still dampened the ardor of the young aeronauts.

An experienced aviator might have found little trouble in guiding his machine while such a wind was in evidence, but it would be next to foolhardy in novices taking such chances.

Bold though he could be on occasion, as he had proven when he fastened that chain to the monoplane in which the two scoundrels were seated, ready to fly away, at the same time Frank could show wonderful discretion.

It was just as well that this were so, for it balanced the team. Andy was an impetuous fellow and apt to rush things without ceremony.

“Don’t you think we might take the chances?” he had said several times during the morning, as he looked up anxiously into the heavens like a bird that longed to be soaring aloft.

“Not at all,” answered the other, decisively. “I’ve got a hunch that along about noon there’ll come something of a change, and this wind die down. Then will be our chance. Think how silly we’d feel if we made the try now, broke some of the parts of the aeroplane, even if we didn’t our precious necks in the bargain, and then when helpless, saw a dead calm settle down.”

“Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. But it’s tough waiting. Oh, yes! There was that drawer in the work bench; I dreamed I found my wrench in there,” and he hurried back into the shed, filled with new zeal.

As he once more reappeared five minutes later, scratching his head, and with a look of gloom on his usually merry face, Frank decided that the great puzzle had not yet been solved. Dreams, then, were not always to be relied upon when searching for things that had gone astray.

It was about eleven o’clock and the breeze certainly did show some signs of going down, when Frank heard his cousin give utterance to an exclamation.

“There! you see some people don’t seem to be afraid to take chances!” Andy was saying, with a touch of discontent in his voice.

Looking up, Frank saw the biplane rising above the trees again. Both boys were plainly noticeable and it was Puss who was piloting the aircraft.

The biplane made several furious dashes this way and that, as slants of wind caught her extended planes. Puss lacked the experience of a skilled aviator and apparently hardly knew how to avoid the full force of those gusts. Again and again Frank caught his breath, fully believing that the biplane was doomed to make an ignominious plunge back to the earth, for the gyrations through which it went seemed to point that way.

“Good for Puss!” he said, after one of these wild exhibitions, from which the airship managed to recover and move along fairly decently. “He’s learning, all right. But I tell you, Andy, they’re taking big chances. I’d rather go a little slow in the start until I’d learned the ropes. Oh, look at that dip, would you? That was a near call. I hope nothing happens to them. I’d hate, for lots of reasons, to see them spilled out or the biplane wrecked so soon.”

“Well, so would I,” declared Andy. “And after all I guess you’re right about taking unnecessary chances. I don’t think I’d like to be in that craft right now.”

But the wind kept falling and as Puss Carberry learned better how to meet each puff of air he manipulated his machine with more success.

“Look, Frank, he’s heading this way! I honestly believe they’re going to fly over our heads! It would be just like Puss and his impudence. I feel like going inside and cheating him out of his laugh.”

But nevertheless Andy did nothing of the kind. His curiosity had been too highly excited, and he was also bent on watching all the crooks and turns made by the advancing biplane, with a view to profiting by the experience of others.

There could be no longer any doubt concerning the design of the two young aviators. The machine was heading straight for the field where Andy had had his hangar built. And presently the biplane was directly over their heads. They could hear the engine humming merrily, while the popping of the unused muffler sounded like the miniature explosion of musketry on a battlefield.

“Hello! caught you napping this time, didn’t we?” called Puss Carberry, as he looked down from his perch, fully eighty feet above their heads.

“Come on up; the sailing’s fine!” mocked Sandy, waving his hand derisively at the two rivals standing there with uptilted heads.

Frank was not possessed of a small nature. He waved back and shouted:

“Fine work, Puss! You’re doing nobly so far; keep it up! We’re going to make a try when the wind goes down. Your biplane looks immense and seems to work in great shape, Bully!”

But Andy said never a word. Truth to tell, he was eating his heart out with envy as he stood there and gaped. For it had been the ambition of his soul that their airship should be the very first ever built in Bloomsbury to navigate the region of the upper currents. And here were the precious pair whom he detested, actually making himself and Frank look like back numbers.

So, having no words to express his disgust, he dodged into the shed again, and Frank heard him throwing things around at a great rate, as he once more tried to get some trace of the mysterious missing tool.

Noon came at last.

The biplane had descended some little time before and apparently with success, from what Frank, who was watching eagerly, could judge.

“Puss is getting a good grip,” he said. “I can see a big difference already in the way he manages. And that is what every air pilot must have—experience with all kinds of conditions.”

“Even when the wind blows!” suggested Andy, a bit maliciously.

“Sure, after he learns his business some,” replied Frank. “And now let’s get lunch over with as soon as possible. Then we will be in condition to make our ascent when the conditions are right. You go in first, Andy. My people will think I’ve taken up boarding with you over here, I reckon; it’s so long since I’ve eaten a meal at home. But you’ve got a boss cook, all right.”

At one o’clock both of them had finished the midday meal. Colonel Josiah, having learned that there was a good chance of a flight that afternoon, had hobbled out to the “aviation field,” as he was pleased to call his property now.

“Wouldn’t miss it for a big lot, lads,” he remarked, as they got him a box to sit down on where he could see everything that took place.

“There’s that biplane bobbing up again away over yonder, colonel,” remarked Frank, about half an hour later.

Of course, the old veteran was intensely interested in the movements of the rival machine. He could not help admire it, even though loyal to the workmanship of his two boys.

“Huh! he’s doing pretty well, I admit,” he said, grumblingly. “But wait till you get going and then he’ll just have to take a back seat. I believe a monoplane is more like a real bird than any of the other types. Ain’t it nigh time, Frank, for you to get a move on? I don’t reckon I can stand this much longer.”

Frank smiled. With two against one it began to look as though he must speedily capitulate. There was Andy keeping a pair of hungry eyes glued upon him and with a look of mute entreaty in his blue eyes.

Frank raised his hand to feel the air, gave one more look all around, drew in a long breath and then turning to his comrade he nodded his head.

“Do we start?” demanded the other, eagerly.

“It is time!” was Frank’s simple reply, as he stepped over to where the little monoplane awaited the coming of its makers.