The Bird boys

“Please pinch me, Frank!” said Andy, weakly.

“What for? Do you think you’re asleep?” asked the other, himself hardly able to believe what his eyes had read.

“It seems like a dream. I just can’t understand it all. Yet there’s the message all right that dropped down from the clouds. And we sure heard voices. Tell me I’m not seeing things that don’t exist, Frank. Say something, for goodness sake!”

Frank did manage to arouse himself at last.

“Well,” said he, slowly and seriously; “let’s look at this thing a bit closer. We were waked up by a big bang. Then we thought we heard voices that gradually grew fainter. You got the notion in your head you glimpsed some sort of flying thing that disappeared over the tree tops to the east. Finally, we picked up this sandbag, made just like those we saw with that balloon that was down at the aviation meet on Long Island. That about covers the business, I reckon.”

“Covers it, yes!” cried Andy, now growing excited; “but it gives me a creep just to think how that balloon, drifting all the way from St. Louis, happened to pass straight over our heads! And then what a streak of luck to have the pilot drop his message at the door of our hangar. Why, it was just like he knew there were a pair of aeroplane boys here ready to grab his message as they would a gold nugget.”

“Right you are, Andy,” observed his cousin. “And do you know I take this as a sign that we’re going to have good luck with our aeroplane. Things are coming our way.”

“I should say they were. First some fellow sneaks in here and cuts the wings of our bird to flinders. Then these balloon racers get the notion that our camp would be a rattling good place to drop a message to their committee. Do we carry out their suggestion, Frank?”

“Do we?” echoed the other, instantly; “well, what would you think of our chances among the profession if we declined to assist fellow aviators hustling the news along? Why, I’d get up out of a warm bed any time of night and wheel twenty miles to carry such a message as that.”

“Then you’ll go to town with it and send to the papers in New York?” demanded Andy.

“Yes, right away; so they can have the news in the morning issues, if it isn’t too late. I’ll hunt up Casper Dunbar. You know he has some sort of connection with the Herald, and never fear but that he’ll find a way to tell the whole story.”

Frank was nothing if not energetic. Even while he was speaking he began to hurriedly dress himself.

“I suppose,” ventured the other, cautiously, as if an idea had suddenly come to him, “our names will have to be mentioned in the telegram?”

“We’ll leave that to Casper. Ten to one he’ll make it a point to say that the boys who had the message left at their door are known as local aeronauts,” replied Frank, secretly chuckling, for he could guess what was coming.

“Well,” said the other, presently, “would you mind asking Casper if he seems bent on mentioning us in his dispatch that he get my name as Andy and not Andrew? You know nobody but the dominie calls me that, and I’ve always detested the name. It belonged to an uncle who after all turned out bad. Spell it for him, Frank—just plain Andy Bird.”

“All right, just as you say. But there’s no need of you sitting up to wait for me. I may be gone quite a while, because you see Casper would want to hear all the particulars. Go back to your cot, Andy.”

“Perhaps I will,” replied the other, who was, however, evidently in no frame of mind to woo the gentle goddess of sleep, for he continued to shake his head from time to time and mutter words covering his astonishment over the “miracle.”

“Say,” he finally burst forth with, “we are lucky and that’s a fact. Suppose now that pilot of the Monarch had just knocked at the door of the Carberry home instead of here, wouldn’t that have queered us? Well, anyway, he knew a real bird-boy had his nesting place where he saw the roof of our hangar. I’m going to let Mr. DeGraw know some day that I consider him a mighty far-sighted gentleman.”

“Shucks! It was just an accident, pure and simple,” laughed Frank, “and we’ll let it go at that. I’m ready to skip off now. Is your wheel in condition, Andy?”

“Plugged that rear tire only yesterday and made a cracking good job. Yep, she is holding like a house afire. Good luck to you, Frank. And be sure that you spell the whole name out for Casper. I’d hate to see it Byrd or Budd or something like that.”

“You certainly take the cake, Andy. Don’t you know that a bird by any other name would fly just as high? But I’ll impress on Casper the enormous crime he’ll be committing if he gets a single letter wrong. By-by!”

Wheeling the bicycle out of doors, Frank threw himself into the saddle after the manner of an accomplished rider and was off.

The moon still rode high in the clear summer sky, so that, after a fashion, it was almost as light as day. Frank quickly found himself on the road. Then it was an easy dash into town and out along the other road, which would speedily bring him to the home of Casper Dunbar.

Left alone in the shed, Andy did return to his cot, for it was rather cool at that uncanny hour of the night. Sleep, however, was the very last thing he considered as he lay there, a thousand thoughts flying riotously through his excited brain.

The strange passing of that balloon racer, which had covered something like a thousand miles in its long drift across country, filled his mind with awe.

If a mere bag of gas, the sport of every shifting wind, could be guided thus far by the skill of its pilot, in rising and falling in order to continue a direct easterly course, what ought not a genuine aeroplane, equipped with the lightest and most complete engine ever constructed, be capable of doing?

In imagination the sanguine bird-boy saw himself and comrade sailing over tracts of wild country never before looked upon by mortal eye, learning the strange secrets that Nature had hidden from mankind all these thousands of years.

“Why,” said Andy, talking to himself in lieu of any better audience, “there can be nothing beyond the reach of a flying machine properly constructed and run by experienced birdmen. It can pass over burning deserts, where caravans have perished. It might even sail to the South Pole and beat Peary at his own game. And of all the pursuits in the world, to my mind that of an aeronaut is the finest. No wonder my poor father was drawn to take it up by his studies. And nothing shall ever keep me from following the same profession, unless I meet with a knockout in the start, which I hope won’t be the case.”

After what seemed to be a long time he fancied he heard Frank returning. But as more minutes passed and no one knocked at the door, across which he had drawn the protecting bar, after the instructions of his mate, Andy concluded he must have been mistaken.

“But it did sound like the tire of a wheel had hit the side of the shack. May have been a squirrel playing about, because I’ve seen lots of ’em,” he muttered as he sat up, leaning on his elbow.

Perhaps it was, but all the same, when the little jar came again, Andy was impelled to climb out of his simple bed and move over to the window.

Possibly he could not wholly forget that on the preceding night some persons had paid a secret visit to the home of the new monoplane and shown a vandal spirit in cutting the wings to shreds.

What if they meant to come again on this night? Andy’s imagination was doubtless pretty well fired after this strange visit from the racing balloon. He also knew the character of the two rival aviators and to what low depths they had often sunk in order to get even with those they chanced to be at odds with.

But all seemed well. The moon hung there like a great silver shield. An owl in a neighboring tree whinnied like a horse, calling to his mate. Everything seemed peaceful enough and with not a sign of intruders anywhere.

Ah, something certainly moved over yonder. Andy had a thrill as he looked with his whole energy. How deceitful that bright moonlight was after all! Why, he could see to read almost, and yet at fifty feet away it would be next to impossible to decide whether the black object he saw were a stump or a cow lying down.

Yes, the thing was moving and coming straight toward the hangar, too. What if it turned out to be either Percy or his shadow, Sandy Hollingshead? Would they dare attempt another mean trick similar to that which was played on the preceding night?

Andy was gritting his teeth and trying to decide whether he ought to shout to let them know their presence was known, when he heard a low signal whistle.

Then after all it was Frank coming back. The two Bird boys had studied telegraphy together, as well as “wigwagging” and the use of the heliograph, as used by the signal corps of the United States army. They had arranged a code after the manner of Morse, by means of which they could communicate with each other, no matter what the distance separating them.

“Hello, Frank, that you?” Andy now asked, softly.

“What’s left of me after banging along the road on a flat tire,” came the immediate answer.

“Gee! did that plagued plug let go after all my pains to set it?” said Andy, regretfully, for he did not like his cousin to deem him an indifferent workman.

“It sure did before I’d gone two hundred feet along the road. But then I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that keep me back,” replied the other, as he came in through the door Andy opened.

“Did you manage to wake him up? I tried once, I remember, and it was a healthy old job. Casper sleeps like a log,” Andy went on.

“Well,” replied Frank, smiling, “it was no easy task; but I pounded on his door with a club till I made such a racket a neighbor called out to know if anybody happened to be dead. I told him I was afraid Casper must be. But just then he poked his head out of a window and told me not to worry, that he had only been napping.”

“Wow! he sure is the limit;” declared Andy. “And then, when he heard what news you brought, did he dress and come down?”

“I guess he did, and was tickled to know that Bloomsbury was going to be on the map again. He asked me a heap of questions, not alone about the message and the dropping of the sand bag, but about our monoplane, and what we expected to do after we got it ready. Why, Casper even remembered that your father had been the well known aviator and balloonist, Professor Bird, once of Cornell.”

“Oh! did he mention that?” breathed Andy, who was always visibly stirred whenever any one spoke of his father. “And Frank, I do hope he gets the name straight. I’d hate so much to see it misspelled; more than ever if he means to mention that I come by my craze naturally.”

“I impressed it upon him good and hard; and Casper promised to print it in big capitals, so that there would be no mixup. And now I’m going to turn in again. It’s a long while to dawn, and what’s the use of our staying up?”

Frank was as good as his word. In ten minutes the shed was wrapped in silence; nor did anything else occur to arouse the boys until the sun, peeping in at some crack, chanced to fall upon the face of Frank, and aroused him.

Andy went in to breakfast, and after he returned to the hangar Frank followed suit; for that was the arrangement, since they did not mean to leave the precious machine alone if it could be helped.

Then they started to work again, for numerous little things remained to be done ere the aeroplane could be deemed in absolutely perfect condition, with every wire taut as a piano string, and the engine working smoothly.

It must have been along about eleven in the morning, when Andy, who had been bending over holding some parts that Frank was adjusting raised his head.

“Somebody coming,” he said, “and it sounds like the rat-tat of Colonel Josiah’s crutch and cane. Say, he’s certainly making speed, all right, like he wanted to see us in a hurry. Wonder what can have happened now, Frank?”

The other immediately crawled out from under the engine of the aeroplane, and hurried to the door, which he opened; to discover that it was the crippled veteran traveler sure enough, and that he was showing signs of some great excitement.