Part 26 (1/2)

Never again would he be so splendidly young, never again so splendidly sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race.

He was sure now that he was destined to pa.s.s Tad Warren.

The sun was ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, r.i.m.m.i.n.g the saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog had almost pa.s.sed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl, lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He pa.s.sed over summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the opal sea. Even for the racer there was peace.

He made out a ma.s.s of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left, then a like rock to the right. ”West and East Rock--New Haven!” he cried.

The city mapped itself before him like square building-blocks on a dark carpet, with railroad and trolley tracks like flas.h.i.+ng spider-webs under the October noon.

So he had arrived, then--and he had not caught Tad Warren. He was furious.

He circled the city, looking for the Green, where (in this day before the Aero Club of America battled against over-city flying) he was to land. He saw the Yale campus, lazy beneath its elms, its towers and turrets dreaming of Oxford. His anger left him.

He plunged down toward the Green--and his heart nearly stopped. The spectators were scattered everywhere. How could he land without crus.h.i.+ng some one? With trees to each side and a church in front, he was too far down to rise again. His back pressed against the back of the little seat, and seemed automatically to be trying to restrain him from this tragic landing.

The people were fleeing. In front there was a tiny s.p.a.ce. But there was no room to sail horizontally and come down lightly. He shut off his motor and turned the monoplane's nose directly at the earth. She struck hard, bounced a second. Her tail rose, and she started, with dreadful deliberateness, to turn turtle. With a vault Carl was out of the c.o.c.kpit and clear of the machine as she turned over.

Oblivious of the clamorous crowd which was pressing in about him, cutting off the light, replacing the clean smell of gasoline and the upper air by the hot odor of many bodies, he examined the monoplane and found that she had merely fractured the propeller and smashed the rudder.

Some one was fighting through the crowd to his side--Tony Bean--Tony the round, polite Mexican from the Bagby School. He was crying: ”_Hombre_, what a landing! You have saved lives.... Get out of the way, all you people!”

Carl grinned and said: ”Good to see you, Tony. What time did Tad Warren get here? Where's----”

”He ees not here yet.”

”What? Huh? How's that? Do I win? That----Say, gos.h.!.+ I hope he hasn't been hurt.”

”Yes, you win.”

A newspaper-man standing beside Tony said: ”Warren had to come down at Great Neck. He sprained his shoulder, but that's all.”

”That's good.”

”But you,” insisted Tony, ”aren't you badly jarred, Hawk?”

”Not a bit.”

The gaping crowd, hanging its large collective ear toward the two aviators, was shouting: ”Hoorray! He's all right!”--As their voices rose Carl became aware that all over the city hundreds of factory-whistles and bells were howling their welcome to him--the victor.

The police were clearing a way for him. As a police captain touched a gold-flas.h.i.+ng cap to him, Carl remembered how afraid of the police that hobo Slim Ericson had been.

Tony and he completed examination of the machine, with Tony's mechanician, and sent it off to a shop, to await Martin Dockerill's arrival by speed-boat and racing-automobile. Carl went to receive congratulations--and a check--from the prize-giver, and a reception by Yale officials on the campus. Before him, along his lane of pa.s.sage, was a kaleidoscope of hands sticking out from the wall of people--hands that reached out and shook his own till they were sore, hands that held out pencil and paper to beg for an autograph, hands of girls with golden flowers of autumn, hands of dirty, eager, small boys--weaving, interminable hands. Dizzy with a world peopled only by writhing hands, yet moved by their greeting, he made his way across the Green, through Phelps Gateway, and upon the campus. Twisting his cap and wis.h.i.+ng that he had taken off his leather flying-coat, he stood upon a platform and heard officials congratulating him.

The reception was over. But the people did not move. And he was very tired. He whispered to a professor: ”Is that a dormitory, there behind us? Can I get into it and get away?”

The professor beckoned to one of the collegians, and replied, ”I think, Mr. Ericson, if you will step down they will pa.s.s you into Vanderbilt Courtyard--by the gate back of us--and you will be able to escape.”

Carl trusted himself to the bunch of boys forming behind him, and found himself rushed into the comparative quiet of a Tudor courtyard.

A charming youngster, hatless and sleek of hair, cried, ”Right this way, Mr. Ericson--up this staircase in the tower--and we'll give 'em the slip.”