Famous Flyers Part 13

"Why, Mrs. Gregg's a nice woman. Don't you think that I should have invited her?" asked the Captain, with a twinkle.

"Oh, but you must have some other reason," said Bob. "You don't want her to come over just because you want an audience for your story."

"Well, to tell the truth," the Captain answered, "I have a motive. Can I count on you to help me?"

"If it's not murder," said Bob.

"Nothing like it," the Captain said. "This is my plan, Bob. You know that we want Hal to come along with us on our trip, now more than at any other time. If we leave him now, all the good that flying and being with us has done him will be wasted, and Hal will be the same fraid-cat that he was before we began to educate him. Now, I'm going to tell the story of Byrd tonight. Byrd started on his adventures when he was very young.

He had a brave mother, who saw that following his own inclinations was good for her son. That much is for Mrs. Gregg. Second-Byrd had to overcome a great many obstacles before he reached his goal. That part is for young Hal. Now, if the Gregg family takes my story seriously tonight, I think that we may have Hal with us on our flight. And Hal will be a new boy. How about it?"

Bob looked admiringly at his uncle. "Gee," he said, "that's a great idea. But I think that you'll have to tell a pretty convincing story."

"Don't you think that I can?"

"Golly, I'm not going to worry about that," said Bob. "I'm sure you can."

When they got in, they found Mrs. Martin sewing, and lost no time in telling her first the events of the day, and second, their plans for the evening.

"But why didn't you invite her to dinner?" asked Mrs. Martin. "I'm sure we'd enjoy having them with us."

"I didn't think of that," said the Captain, "or rather, I thought that I was taking enough liberty in just inviting somebody to your home for the evening."

"I'll call her," said Mrs. Martin firmly. A far away look came into her eyes. "You know," she said, "I think that I shall do some talking to Mrs. Gregg myself, I have some things to tell her about raising her own son. I suppose she will resent it, but I shall at least have the satisfaction of getting it off my chest, and perhaps of helping poor Hal."

"Hal's the one I'm interested in," said the Captain. "He acted like a real hero in that plane today. Kept his head, and saved himself and the plane. He's got the stuff, all right, and he can handle a plane."

"I'm with you, Captain," said Bob. "And with you and Mom on the job, I don't see how anybody can possibly get away with anything. You two could convince anybody of anything."

His mother looked at him speculatively. "Can I convince you right now that you ought to go up and wash? Believe me, young man, you can't get away with looking that dirty, if that's what you mean."

Grinning sheepishly, Bob went out of the room. "You win," he called.

"And I'm betting on you tonight, too."

CHAPTER VIII-North Pole and South

Dinner was a jolly affair. Everybody was in excellent humor. Hal had quite recovered from his afternoon's experience; Pat had succeeded in getting the Marianne into perfect shape; Bill looked forward to his evening's plans with relish; and Bob was happy just on general principles, antic.i.p.ating a great evening, and because he was usually happy. Mrs. Gregg, who often became lonely by herself, was glad of being in such pleasant company.

They went into the garden after dinner, and the Captain, after filling up his ever-present pipe, began his story.

"Well," he said, "there's only one way to begin the story of anybody's life. That's by telling when he was born, because after all, that's the first thing that happens to a man, isn't it? Well, Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd was born on October 25, 1888, in Winchester, Virginia, where there had been Byrds ever since anybody could remember. In fact, the first Byrd settled in America about 1690, and the name has been a prominent and honored one ever since. There were Byrds fighting in the Revolution and in the Civil War, so it wasn't from nowhere that our Richard Evelyn got his courage and grit that carried him through the dangers of being the first man to cross both the North and the South poles in a plane.

"He had a grandmother, too, who gave him a goodly supply of what it takes to do great deeds. That was Jane Byrd, who was the sort of person around whom legends spring up, and are carried down from generation to generation. In fact, one of them was a famous story of her killing of a huge blacksnake. It was during the Civil War. Her husband and her brother were both fighting for the Confederacy, and Jane Byrd was left alone to manage the great plantation and farm. And manage it she did.

One day she went to gather the eggs in the chicken house, and found a great blacksnake had swallowed twelve prized guinea eggs that had been set under a setting hen. She clubbed the snake to death with a club, taking care not to strike the twelve b.u.mps that showed all down its body the places where the twelve guinea eggs reposed. Then she cut the snake open and took out the eggs and put them back under the hen, without a bit of fuss or excitement. She took seriously the charge that she must take care of the estate while her men were away fighting.

"Richard Byrd couldn't have had better ancestors to back him up in his adventures, but every ounce of courage, every bit of perseverance that he inherited, he needed. He was a man who met with hundreds of disappointments, and innumerable obstacles in carrying out the plans that meant so much to him and to the world. But he was never downed by them. Set-backs that would have made other men, men of lesser caliber turn from their paths and give up their plans, were just so much more of a spur to him.

"d.i.c.k Byrd was never a robust man. He had the physical handicap of a bad ankle to overcome, and his general build has always been slight. He is not the huge, strapping hero of story-book fame; he was the little Napoleon with a great determination that outweighed any physical weakness. A man doesn't have to be big to get places. A little fellow, if he wants to badly enough, can accomplish a lot.

"And d.i.c.k Byrd certainly wanted badly to go to the Pole. Even when he was a kid in school, it was his ambition to be the first man to reach the North Pole. Somebody beat him to it. Peary got there first, but it took him a long time, and he had to go on foot. Byrd flew, and accomplished in a few hours what had taken days and weeks to do before.

"Not only did he want to go to the Pole-he wanted to go to all sorts of places, and he did, too. Before he was fourteen years old, Richard Byrd traveled alone around the world! That took nerve. And not only nerve on Richard Byrd's part, but on the part of his mother! The trip wasn't a regular round-the-world tour that anybody can make today on a boat that's like a little palace, but it was a rough, adventurous voyage on an army transport, and a British tramp.

"It was like this. You see, d.i.c.k had struck up a friendship with Captain Kit Carson. After the Spanish American War, Carson went to the Philippines as a Circuit Court Judge. But he didn't forget his friend d.i.c.k. They exchanged letters. In one letter the Captain mentioned that it would be a fine idea if d.i.c.k Byrd came down to the Philippines to see the exciting time that they were having down there. d.i.c.k took him up on the idea, and made plans to go. At first his mother was horrified at the idea, since d.i.c.k was not a strong boy. But with unusual intelligence, she decided to let him go, since the trip would be an educational one, and would do the boy more good than any possible harm that could come to him. The very fact that he wanted so badly to go, and planned his trip so carefully, made her feel that he had reached an age where he must be allowed to decide for himself. This was a very wise decision on her part, since it was probably this trip, with its adventures in self-reliance that made Richard into the successful adventurer that he is."

"The trip to Manila was made exciting by a typhoon that stuck the transport-something that the boy would not have wanted to miss, although the Captain of the transport could have done very well without it-he said it was the worst that he'd ever been through.

"They got to Manila, though, safe and sound, and d.i.c.k was greeted by his friend Carson. Manila was intensely amusing for a boy of fourteen.

Amusing, and mighty exciting. The excitement included a lone combat with a gang of angry rebels armed with knives-from which the young d.i.c.k escaped only by the fleetness of his pony's heels. That's the sort of adventure young boys dream of, and that's the sort they should have to look back on, if they are to live the full sort of life that Richard Byrd did.

"From Manila, d.i.c.k went visiting to Darim Island. On the island the cholera plague was raging, and d.i.c.k got exposed to the disease. They put him into quarantine. He didn't get the cholera, but all around him men were dying in terrible agony. Finally the doctor managed to get d.i.c.k to the seaport, and he got a boat for Manila. They were glad to see him back, and he was glad to be back.

"After Manila, d.i.c.k went on his merry way around the world by way of Ceylon and the Red Sea to Port Said, where he reshipped for the last lap of his cruise. It was a wonderful trip for a boy, and there's no doubt that it had a great influence on all that he did later.

"When Richard got back, and had settled down more or less, his parents decided that he should go to Virginia Military Inst.i.tute. He was popular at the Inst.i.tute, as he was popular wherever he went, for his spirit-that old spirit that carried him around the world, and later across both of the earth's poles. It was the same spirit that made him try out for the football team at V.M.I.-and carried him to the position of end on the first team. It was at that time that an incident occurred which was to be very significant in his later life. In one game of the season he broke his ankle. This was not important in itself-but it happened to be the first break of an ankle that was going to bother d.i.c.k again and again-and almost at one time defeat him entirely.

"But I'm getting ahead of my story. After being graduated from the Military Inst.i.tute, d.i.c.k Byrd went quite naturally to Annapolis. He entered in 1908. He carried his popularity and his success with him to this place. His grades were not of the highest, but he excelled in athletics, going out for football again, besides track, boxing, and wrestling.

"In his last year at Annapolis, d.i.c.k's ankle made itself felt again.

d.i.c.k was Captain of his gym squad, which was competing in the big exhibition of the year. d.i.c.k, as Captain, wanted to make a spectacular showing, and cinch the meet for his team. To do this, he invented an intricate, complicated series of tricks on the bars, calculated to stir up the most lethargic members of the audience. It would have been a great trick-if it had succeeded-but it didn't. d.i.c.k slipped, somehow, and his hands failed to connect with the bars. Down he went-on the same ankle, breaking it once more.

"In 1912 he got his commission, and became an ensign. And he also began to formulate plans for his great adventures. Connected with the Navy-there was no telling what opportunity for adventure would come to him. But he reckoned without his ankle. It gave way a third time-this time while he was going down a gangway, so that he was pitched headfirst down. They tried to fix up the ankle-in fact, they joined the bones together with a silver nail. That is, Byrd thought that they had used a silver nail-and when he discovered that just a plain, ordinary nail had been used, he felt very much deflated. Nail and all, Byrd walked with a limp, and an ensign with a limp was just useless, so far as the Navy was concerned. So Byrd was retired.

"That must have been an awful blow to him. Not only was the only career open to him cut short, but he had been married the year before, to Marie Ames, a childhood sweetheart from Winchester. So that his retirement affected not just himself, but another as well.

"It might have floored a lesser man. But not d.i.c.k Byrd. In 1917 the United States went into the World War, And Byrd, who had been rejected by the Navy, and who doubtless could not have found a place in the army, decided to go into the branch of the service that wouldn't ask questions about his bad leg-because it didn't matter whether he had a bad leg or not-in aviation. So to aviation he turned.

"He entered the Naval flying school at Pensacola, Florida. It was a lucky day for Byrd and for aviation that he took to the air. It seems that the air was where he belonged. He was a Byrd by birth, and might have been born with wings, for the ease with which he took to flying.

"He became a.s.sistant superintendent of the school, and was on the commission to investigate accidents. There were a lot of them, then. The planes were not so highly developed as they are now-and the green youngsters who were entering the service could not handle them. You can imagine how horrible it was to see some friend's plane come crashing down into the ocean, and have to be the first to go out in the rescue boat, in order to do what was possible to rescue him, and to discover what had caused the accident. A warning from the observation tower-somebody was in tailspin. A deafening crash! And the rescue boat would be put out before the waves from the great splash had subsided. At this work Byrd learned that more than half of the accidents could have been avoided with care-either in inspecting the machine before going up, or in handling it up in the air.

"d.i.c.k Byrd was just too good. That was his tough luck at this point in his career. He was too good to be sent over to France, where he wanted to go. He was sent instead to Canada, where he was chief of the American air forces in Canada. At this job, as well as at any other that he undertook, Byrd acquitted himself admirably. And even though he chafed at being kept in America, he did his job well.

"But his mind was soaring across the ocean. As early as 1917 Byrd wanted to fly the Atlantic. But there was always something that interfered.

After the war, he pet.i.tioned the Navy again about a cross-Atlantic voyage, and was given permission to go over to England and sail the ZR-2 back to America. How tragically this may have ended for Byrd you can see. The ZR-2, on a trial flight suddenly burst into flames and crashed into the Humber river. Forty-four of the pa.s.sengers were killed, among them friends of Byrd. It was Richard Byrd's task to investigate the wreck that might very easily have claimed him for one of its victims.

"In 1924 his hopes seemed about to be realized at last. He was a.s.signed to the dirigible Shenandoah, and was to fly it across Alaska and the North Pole. But the Shenandoah, too, met with disaster, and Byrd's hopes were again dashed. The Navy rejected his pet.i.tion to go with Amundsen on the trip that he planned over the Pole, and all hope seemed gone. In fact, as a final blow, Byrd was retired from the aviation service altogether.

"But he was as undaunted by this setback as he had been by his retirement from the Navy. He set about immediately to organize his own Polar expedition, which was to be climaxed by his flight over the Pole in 1926.

"Floyd Bennett, whom Byrd often said was the best man in the world to fly with, helped him plan his expedition which was to be the realization of all his boyhood dreams and visions. It wasn't easy to plan, and the foresighted planning, they knew, would mean the success or failure of their project.

"They chose a three-motored Fokker monoplane, with 200 horsepower Wright air-cooled motors. It was 42 feet 9 inches long, with a wing spread of over 63 feet. It was capable of a high speed of 120 miles an hour.

"That was the plane, the Josephine Ford. Their ship was the Chantier, given him by the Shipping Board. The crew was made up of picked men, and Byrd knows how to pick them. Not one of them failed to live up to his expectations on that trip.