Chapter THREE

The scene of activity that marks the pending departure of a transoceanic airship was being enacted at the great airport of San Francisco just as the first streaks of dawn broke over the Eastern sky. At the peak of terminal tower number six, one thousand feet above the ground, the airship Wilbur Wright was moored by its nose. The airship moved slowly and sluggishly back and forth in a small arc of a circle whenever the fitful breeze caught its glistening sides, as though it were a mammoth weathercock indicating the direction of the wind.

The top of the tower was a huge revolving globe with a vast socket on one side. It was in this socket that the nose of the airship was automatically locked, the entire tower being a mooring post that enabled the airship to swing to the action of the wind in the same manner that a steamship swings on its anchor chain to the action of the tide.

Upon the airship the rigging crew was busily engaged in unscrewing the feed pipes from the gas valves, after the last volume of helium gas had been taken into the ballonets. The buoyancy of the gas naturally kept the giant airship afloat in the sea of air and relieved the tower from all strain of the ship’s great weight.

Through the center of the tower was a shaft for passenger and freight elevators. The latter were running at maximum speed, taking up the last pieces of cargo.

On the aerodrome below, the big transcontinental passenger airplane had just landed on the concrete runway after a fifteen hour non-stop flight through the night from New York. It taxied over to the landing platform at the foot of the tower, after the pilot had drawn up the retractible wings to the sides of the fuselage.

As it drew alongside the landing platform, a door in the side of the fuselage swung open, and the workers on the platform put out a gangplank to the door. The passengers then filed out, carrying their small hand baggage. They walked into the waiting hall inside the base of the tower. Here was situated the restaurant, wireless station, and all other facilities necessary to a terminal station.

Immediately after disembarking the passengers trooped into the restaurant and ate breakfast, while the terminal employes were busily engaged in taking their baggage up to the airship.

Among the passengers who had just arrived on the transcontinental airplane were Mrs. Ingleton, wife of the Secretary of the Navy, and her daughter Mary. With them was Wing Commander Kenneth Fitzgerald, an aviation officer who had been transferred from a departmental executive job at Washington to the command of the air station at Manila. He was on his way to take over his new command in the East.

In Washington he had been a close friend of the Secretary of the Navy and his family, and very naturally Mr. Ingleton had asked the commander to look after Mrs. Ingleton and Mary during their voyage, since all three were bound for the same destination by the same ship.

Together with the other passengers the three entered the restaurant and breakfasted.

Mary Ingleton was a prepossessing athletic young lady imbued with the full sense of importance of her twenty-two Summers. From the moment of her debut she had been one of the reigning belles in Washington society, with all the eligible young men of the Capital in her retinue as willing slaves.

She was a blonde with a crowning aureole of golden tinged hair and her big flashing blue eyes gave a true indication of the independence that formed the basis of her character. She was rather tall. Her features were regular, perfect and charming.

She had been the principal of a hundred romances. All these, however, were but minor incidents that came and went to form the background of her life.

Suddenly Washington was confronted with the fact that Mary, the acknowledged queen, had quit her domain, at the height of her triumphal conquests, to travel for no apparent purpose in the Orient. Her departure, so unexpected, set the tongues of gossip and jealousy awagging. The coincidence of Fitzgerald’s appointment to the Eastern station was developed to the fullest extent of its possibilities in the small talk that followed. Six months previously, it was recalled, Joe Levanter, the dashing young aviator had disappeared, and he had been one of Mary’s most persistent admirers. He had vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up.

Since his disappearance, pointed out gossip, there was no doubt about the change that had come over Mary. From the central figure in the varied activities of social life she had changed into a recluse and had begun to take her pleasure more seriously.

With the characteristic imperturbability of youth Mary had remained oblivious to the covert glances and whispered remarks of those about her. But there was more than mere imperturbability that made her gaze so indifferent, her actions so apathetic. She was absorbed in a process of self-study that claimed all her mental energies. Stubbornly and deeply she was questioning something, probing something, prying into something. This something, though but a memory now, she endeavored to recreate into a present reality. And in her tireless effort to make the past live again in the present she sought an opportunity to reexamine and reappraise her actions. Were they altogether right? What possible effect did or will they have on her future? How was she to gain that ease and tranquility of mind that seem to be the result as well as the reward of making a right decision. Has her opportunity come and gone? Will she ever have another? She did not know, and the less she knew the more she thought and speculated on the subject.

Her mind dwelt continuously upon a scene that six months previously had made a profound impression upon her. From the moment of its enactment she had been in the grip of that mental self-absorption until it began to affect her even outwardly so seriously that her parents had willingly consented to her eastern trip.

Even now in the transoceanic air terminal for the first time, Mary’s mind, unaffected by the sights that were novel to her, reverted to the occasion that had persistently beset her. In her mind’s eye she pictured for the hundredth time the incident with Joe Levanter that was the direct cause of her present unplanned journey. Mary was uneasy mentally. She was not sure that she hated Levanter, nor was she sure that she loved him. Of one thing only was she certain, and that was she could not be indifferent to the memory of their last meeting.

He was indeed a remarkable young man who had precipitated within her strange, mixed feelings that she could not define. She remembered the last call he made upon her at her home in Washington. Back upon the screen of her memory there flashed again a moving picture which portrayed every incident of that momentous evening. She saw herself stroll out of the house with him across the porch to the rustic seat back of the lawn. She again saw him go through the impassioned gestures of his proposal, and her ears--deaf to the multitudinous noises around her--again heard his words repeated from the indelible record impressed upon her mind.

“Mary, if you will only say yes the world shall be yours and mine. I have just done something wonderful that will bring me great fame, and I want you to share it with me. Won’t you say the word that will make me forever happy, dear?”

She again saw his coal black eyes peering straight at her with a penetrating gaze, and the living intenseness stamped upon his face. She saw herself held immovable by the equal strength of the opposing forces that were battling within her. She saw herself transfixed in this pose of painful indecision for what seemed to be eternity, until the sound of his voice again broke through her reverie.

“Mary, I must have your answer now, this very minute, my life, my future--everything depends upon it.”

Then as in a dream she heard herself repeat the momentous “No” that escaped from her lips before she realized she had spoken. Why she had said it she did not know then, and the constant introspection of the past six months had failed to produce a reason. Was it the spontaneous response of intuition?

Daily for six months she had reviewed the scene, and yet even now, as on the day of its occurrence she gave an involuntary start as she thought of the effect produced by her refusal. She again saw the quick change that came over Levanter, the rage that suddenly lit up his olive brown features and shone from his eyes. She again heard him as he spoke with suppressed fury in his voice:

“Mary I love you. I still love you, but evidently to you my feeling has been nothing but a pleasant diversion. You have played with it, encouraged it. You have led me to believe that there was more than hope for me. And now you coldly dash that hope to pieces, knowing full well that it has been the moving principle of all my plans, of all my efforts.... I don’t know what is going to happen to me. But I know one thing. You cannot by a mere word detach yourself from the fate which you and I have been preparing for ourselves. Whether with me or away for me, you too shall bear the responsibility for my future as you bore it for my past, and shall feel the effects of whatever is in store for me.”

“Good bye, Mary, but don’t forget. I shall not.”

As Mary, still enthralled, saw with her mental eye the stalwart frame leaping over the fence back of the lawn, she felt a tug at her arm. Turning around she passed from the realm of memory to that of actuality in the person of her mother who was exclaiming:

“Why, Mary, you haven’t touched your breakfast, dear. What are you thinking of, child? Come now, we shall have to hurry, for the ship is leaving in a few minutes.”

Almost automatically Mary began to eat impelled by duty rather than appetite. She listened attentively while Fitzgerald with the fervor of an expert was explaining everything about the station. His own branch of aeronautics was concerned chiefly with the lighter than air types of air vessels, and he was now in his very element, anxious to impart his knowledge to his fair ward.

Breakfast over, the three walked from the restaurant to the elevator and ascended with other passengers to the landing platform at the top of the tower. There a steward took their baggage and escorted them along the alleyway to their cabins. As soon as they had located themselves Fitzgerald took them to the observation room, and secured for them a favorable window seat where they could watch the departure of the great airship.

The view unfolded before their enraptured gaze was unforgettable. One thousand feet below they saw the glories of the island-strewn San Francisco Bay. It was spread out beneath them like a map. They saw its shores, and those of San Pablo Bay. They saw the magnificent rivers Sacramento and San Joaquin emptying their streams into the beautiful bay. A few miles to the north Mount Tamalpais towered above them. On the hazy horizon of the Pacific they could just make out the Farallones. Directly below, the hilly city appeared almost flat.

Meanwhile the airship was making ready to leave. The six engines were now running slowly, but the propellors were locked in a horizontal position. The captain, megaphone in hand, and his officers were on the bridge waiting to give the signal to cast off. Friends of the passengers were grouped about the balcony beneath the mooring globe, waving flags and handkerchiefs.

Finally the agent of the line left the airship. The captain rang an order to the engine room, and a moment later the changeable pitch propellor on the after engine nacelle was thrown into reverse and commenced to revolve slowly. Then through the megaphone the captain shouted the order to the employes on the tower: “Let go!”

The engineer on the pier touched a button, and the electric machinery, moving with swiftness and precision, released the clutch that held the airship to the tower. The reversed propellor pulled the giant frame clear of the tower before it could rise. A few moments later the buoyancy of the helium gas had lifted it to an altitude of ten thousand feet.

The watchers on the balcony saw the ship turn slowly in a circle, and then with gathering speed swiftly float to the western horizon. As the last farewell cheer died away the telephone bell in the main office rang. A clerk reached leisurely over and lifted the receiver to his ear. He uttered a languid “hello!” A voice came back immediately: “We have a rush long distance call from Washington for Miss Mary Ingleton, a passenger on the airship Wilbur Wright,” it said.

“Too late,” replied the clerk, “the ship has just gone.”