JOE STRONG AND HIS WINGS OF STEEL

OR A YOUNG ACROBAT IN THE CLOUDS

BY

VANCE BARNUM

Author of “Joe Strong, the Boy Wizard,” “Joe Strong on the Trapeze,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK HEARST’S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO. PUBLISHERS

BOOKS FOR BOYS

BY

VANCE BARNUM

THE JOE STRONG SERIES

12mo. Cloth Illustrated. Price per volume, 60 cents, postpaid.

JOE STRONG, THE BOY WIZARD Or, The Mysteries of Magic Exposed

JOE STRONG ON THE TRAPEZE Or, The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer

JOE STRONG, THE BOY FISH Or, Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank

JOE STRONG ON THE HIGH WIRE Or, Motor-Cycle Perils of the Air

JOE STRONG AND HIS WINGS OF STEEL Or, A Young Acrobat in the Clouds

Copyright, 1916, by Hearst’s International Library Company

JOE STRONG AND HIS WINGS OF STEEL

[Pg iii]

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

JOE STRONG AND HIS WINGS OF STEEL

CHAPTER I A QUEER MACHINE

“This is where you’ve been hiding yourself, is it, Joe?”

“Yes, I’ve been practically living here for the last month or so, supervising my new machine, Benny. Come in and I’ll show it to you. And you too, Bill. You may be interested.”

“Does it work?” asked the man addressed as Bill, a stout, good-natured looking, and jolly individual, who, accompanied by a youth, had called at a certain factory to see Joe Strong.

“Work? Well, I hope it will, Bill,” answered Joe. “But it isn’t in shape for trial yet. I hope to have it completed, or nearly so, in a week. Then I’ll give you a real exhibition.”

“You’re great on exhibitions,” returned Benny Turton, laughing.

[Pg 2]

“Yes, I like ’em,” admitted Joe with a smile. “But come in. Mr. Brader has about given me the run of his factory, and I can take you all through, though I guess you’ve seen most of the stuff here.”

“Yes, circus apparatus isn’t new to either of us,” said Bill Watson, who was a veteran clown. “But we’re interested in your new machine, Joe.”

Joe Strong, who on hearing that his two friends from the Sampson Brothers’ Show, where he had formerly performed, would be in the neighborhood where the new apparatus was being made, had invited them to come to see it, and they had taken advantage of his offer.

Led by Joe, Bill and Benny followed through the big factory, which was a humming hive of industry, for Mr. Brader was one of the largest manufacturers of circus apparatus in the country.

Joe unlocked a door and admitted his friends to a room partitioned off from the main part of the factory.

“The men aren’t working on my machine just at present,” he said. “We had to send off to get certain parts, and there’s a delay. But it is so nearly completed that you can get an idea of what it will do. Here she is!”

He threw open the door, and for a moment neither Ben nor Bill said anything. They just stood looking at the queer machine.

Finally Bill asked:

[Pg 3]

“What’s it for?”

“Flying,” answered Joe.

“Humph!” mused the veteran clown. “You’ll break your neck, Joe Strong, if you try to fly with wings like that. Don’t risk it!”

“That’s right, Joe,” chimed in Benny Turton. “I don’t know what this machine is, but you sure do take too many risks. Your trapeze work was bad enough——”

“But it wasn’t anything to the way he rode his motor-cycle on the high wire,” put in Bill. “And now he’s going to do something even more dangerous.”

Joe regarded his friends with smiling face.

“You’re not giving me a chance to explain,” he said. “I don’t believe my wings of steel will be any more dangerous than riding the motor-cycle on the high wire was.”

“Wings of steel, eh? Is that what you call them?” asked Benny Turton.

“Yes, that’s as good a name as any, and if you’ll come closer and look you’ll see that the wings are really of light sheet steel, almost as thin as paper, but very strong. Take a look.”

The two visitors came closer to the queer apparatus. They saw a sort of cage, made of metal and of leather thongs. On either side of this cage extended a bat-like wing of thin curved steel, as thin almost, according to Joe, as a sheet of paper. [Pg 4]But the wing was braced and reinforced by spreading ribs of metal, as the bones of a bat’s wing hold that membrane extended.

The wings were hinged to the middle frame, and as Joe touched the thin leaves of metal they rose and fell at his touch, creating a little breeze in the workroom.

“Is that how it operates?” asked the clown. “Are you going to work the wings up and down by your hands and arms?”

“No, indeed,” Joe answered. “I couldn’t get enough power that way. Here is what operates them.”

He showed his friends two spaces down in the lower part of the framework.

“Powerful storage batteries of a new type are to go in there,” Joe explained. “And they operate motors which will vibrate the wings up and down.”

“Then you’re really going to fly like a bird?” asked Ben.

“Well, I hope to. Of course I can’t be sure about it until I make the test. I’m waiting now for the motors. They have been delayed, but I expect them in about a week, and then I’ll make a trial flight.”

“Going to invite us to see it?” asked Bill.

“I’ll be glad to have you come,” said Joe.

The old clown shook his head.

[Pg 5]

“I like you too much, Joe, to see you smashed to pieces,” said the veteran laugh-maker. “I guess I’ll stay away.”

“I won’t be dashed to pieces,” declared Joe. “The trouble is going to be—if there is any—in going up, not in coming down.”

“How do you make that out?” asked Ben. “I thought the descent was where the most trouble was in flying stunts. As the Irishman said, it wasn’t the falling that hurt, it was the stopping that made all the mischief.”

Joe laughed.

“I don’t believe I’ll have that trouble,” he said. “As I told you, I’ll be all right if I can make my wings of steel raise me from the ground. Then even if my motor should stop unexpectedly I would just have to glide down as a bird soars.”

“Oh, that’s why you feel you won’t be hurt,” said the clown; “your wings of steel will be like a parachute.”

“Something, yes,” conceded Joe. “So you needn’t have any fear of coming to see me perform.”

“Well, under that condition I’ll come,” agreed Bill, and Benny said he would also.

“This must be costing something,” observed the clown. “They can’t make single machines like this for a few dollars.”

[Pg 6]

“It is costing me a pretty penny,” said Joe. “But it’s an idea I’ve long had in mind, and I wanted to carry it out.

“I’ve put a large part of what I got from my mother’s estate in England into this machine, and I expect to put in more when I get the rest of what is coming to me. That will be along soon, and I’ll just about need it. This experimenting eats up cash. I had to have everything made to order. There wasn’t a single thing I needed carried in stock.

“It was while I was riding my motor-cycle in the circus one day that I got my idea of wings of steel,” Joe went on to explain. “I thought how fine it would be if I could glide like a bird.”

“Why didn’t you get an aeroplane?” asked Bill. “They’re quite common now—almost as common as automobiles, and there are even schools where they teach one to fly.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Joe. “They’re too common. There isn’t enough of novelty about them. I wanted something that would draw a big crowd.”

“Then you’re going to give exhibitions with your wings of steel—I mean public exhibitions?” asked Benny Turton.

“I hope to.”

“And will you come back to the circus?” asked Bill.

[Pg 7]

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Joe slowly. “I can’t tell what I’m going to do until I find out if my machine is going to be a success. That’s the main point.”

“Let’s see how you look inside it,” suggested Ben, and Joe took his position within the queer framework, and slipped his arms into loops on the underside of the wings of steel.

“I can move them by hand power, just to give you an idea how they work,” he said, as he vibrated the big wings, and a breeze came, so strong that it blew off the clown’s straw hat.

“Say, you’ve got some power there, Joe!” the laugh-maker commented.

“I’ll need it,” asserted the young inventor. “It’s going to be no easy task to raise me and the machine off the earth. Once we’re up, though, the gliding motion will sustain me, just as a thin sheet of tin will scale through the air.

“You see I can steer myself by working one wing faster than the other, for each one will have a separate motor. I also have a small rudder down here, or, rather, two rudders. I control them with my feet. One is for steering from side to side, and the other is the elevation rudder. By deflecting it one way I can go up, and by reversing it I glide down.”

“It sounds easy,” said Ben, but there was doubt in his tone.

[Pg 8]

“Joe, you sure have ideas,” commented Bill. “But I wouldn’t take the risks you do—not for a good many thousand dollars!”

“Well, if this thing works right, I’ll be a good many thousand dollars in pocket,” Joe said. “I’ll take in big money by going about the country giving real flying exhibitions—not circling around in an airship or an aeroplane—though they’re wonderful enough; I don’t mean to say anything against them.

“But my wings of steel will be different. I want to resemble a big bird as nearly as I can, and I think therein will be the great novelty.”

“Yes, it will be novel all right,” admitted Bill.

Joe then gave a further demonstration of his queer apparatus—that is, as good a demonstration as he could under the circumstances. The two visitors looked at it on all sides, but neither one had very much faith in Joe’s plan.

“You’d better stick to the motor-cycle,” said Benny Turton. “As for me, the tank where I play a human fish is good enough for me.”

Joe crawled out of the framework, and pointed out some other mechanical appliances on his apparatus. As he was locking the workroom preparatory to accompanying his two friends outside, a messenger handed him a letter.

“Ha! Maybe this is what I’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Word of the motors being completed.”

[Pg 9]

Then, as he looked at the stamp and saw a foreign one on the envelope, he said:

“Why, this is from England! I guess they’re sending me the rest of my money. Well, it will come in handy.”

He opened the letter quickly. A hasty glance through the contents caused Joe to utter an exclamation; and it was not one of joy.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bill Watson.

“Bad news,” replied Joe quietly. “Very bad!”

[Pg 10]

CHAPTER II TANGLES

For a moment Bill and Ben hesitated, and each, in his own mind, pondered whether it would be better or not to leave Joe alone for a while, and allow him to settle his own affairs. And then the fellowship that seems to exist among persons who perform together for the amusement of the public asserted itself, and Bill asked sympathetically:

“Is there anything we can do, Joe? Is it bad news about your new machine? Can’t they make it for you—I mean finish it?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” Joe said. “This letter is from a lawyer in England who was looking after my affairs. He says my mother’s estate is badly tangled up, and it is doubtful if I ever get any more money out of it, and I may be sued for taking what I have already had.”

Benny Turton whistled.

“That’s hard luck!” he exclaimed. “Why, I thought everything was going smoothly. I don’t see how they can take back what you have already had.”

[Pg 11]

“They’ll have their own troubles getting it,” said Joe, “as most of it has been spent on my wings of steel. But of course if the courts decide that I had no right to it, I will have spent it wrongfully, and I’ll be liable to punishment.”

“Why, I thought the lawyer for the mining syndicate that Mr. Craige represented handled your affairs,” said Bill Watson.

“He did at first,” Joe answered, “but he had to turn my legal matters over to some one who was not so busy as he. A Mr. Kent Bolling now has charge, and this letter is from him. The whole affair is all mixed up. I’ll have to write him a letter at once and ask what can be done.”

“Then we’ll leave you,” said Ben. “Come to the circus when you can, Joe. We’re playing a straight week in Wharton, and you may find time to run over. Wharton is only ten miles. We came on the train to-day, but you can make it on your motor-cycle.”

“Yes, I’ll try to get over,” promised Joe. And then, bidding his friends good-bye, he went to his boarding place to pen a letter to the English solicitor.

And while Joe is doing that just a moment will be taken to acquaint new readers with something of the history of Joe Strong, as it has been given in the previous books of this series.

In the first volume, entitled “Joe Strong, the [Pg 12]Boy Wizard; Or, the Mysteries of Magic Exposed,” it is related that Joe, having run away from home, fell in with a stage magician, Professor Rosello, and went on the road with him, doing tricks. Joe was particularly fitted for this, as his father, Alexander Strong, known as Professor Morretti, had been a magician himself.

The boy’s mother, whose maiden name was Janet Willoughby, had learned to ride spirited horses in England, where she was born. She afterward came to America and joined a circus, she and her husband sometimes traveling together and again in separate shows.

So Joe inherited dexterity and daring. He became an expert sleight-of-hand worker, and learned to do many circus tricks. He was fearless and nerveless, and he could as easily balance himself on his head on top of the church spire as he could down on the ground.

Joe’s father and mother had died when he was small, and he was brought up by a rather strict man, Deacon Amos Blackford, from whom he later ran away.

After various adventures on the road with Professor Rosello, Joe Strong joined Sampson Brothers’ Circus and became one of the performers. In the second volume, named “Joe Strong on the Trapeze; Or, the Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer,” the story of Joe’s life in the circus [Pg 13]is given. It was an exciting one. He made friends and enemies, and among the former were Bill Watson, the veteran clown, who had known Joe’s mother; Benny Turton, who performed in a big glass tank of water, and was known as the human fish; and Helen Morton, a pretty bareback rider.

Joe became an expert on the trapeze and flying rings, and it was while with the show that he once showed how long he could stay under water in Benny’s glass tank.

In the third volume, “Joe Strong, the Boy Fish; Or, Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank,” we find Joe taking the place of Benny Turton, who became incapacitated through illness.

Joe had many adventures while acting as the “boy fish.” He improved Ben’s act greatly, and learned to stay under water for nearly five minutes at a stretch. This served him in good stead once when a diver was caught in an outlet pipe at the bottom of a big reservoir.

From a stranded circus juggler Joe bought a motor-cycle. He became an expert rider, then had an idea that he could do some thrilling tricks with the gasoline-bicycle. In the fourth book, called “Joe Strong on the High Wire; Or, Motor-Cycle Perils of the Air,” we find Joe perfecting the feat of riding his machine across an open space on a suspended wire.

But this was not the only feat the lad did, for [Pg 14]he climbed up the outside of the Flatiron Building in New York, for a moving picture concern, and rode across a street on a wire stretched from one high building to another.

Joe left the circus for a time, but came back to it to give exhibitions of his motor-cycle riding, and it was while on the road that he received information which enabled him to claim some money from England. His mother, it appeared, was heir to part of a large estate. She had been disowned by her family when she married Mr. Strong, but at the last her father forgave her, and expressed a wish to have her share in his money.

While on his motor-cycle one day Joe was able to save from severe injury, if not from death, two Englishmen, Mr. Forrest Craige and Mr. Floyd Strailey, and it was Mr. Craige who helped our hero to obtain his inheritance.

With the money he received Joe was able to carry out a long-cherished scheme—that of building for himself wings of steel, a partial account of which has already been given in the present volume.

The youth had left the circus at the close of the previous season, when the show wintered in one of the Southern states, in order to devote his time to building his queer flying machine. Now it was nearing completion.

The circus was again on the road, but Joe was [Pg 15]not with it, though he thought he might rejoin it at some future time. Among the reasons for this, aside from earning his living, was the fact that Joe was very fond of Helen Morton, and he had a faint idea that some day he might be able to manage matters so she would not have to perform in public, as a circus environment is not always best for a girl, though there are many noble men and women in the profession.

At any rate, Joe’s wings of steel were now nearly finished, and he had great hopes of what he could do with them by giving exhibitions in public, as he had done when he rode his motor-cycle on the high wire.

“But if what this lawyer says is true, and I am to get no more money from mother’s estate, and, not only that, but have to pay back what I have already used, then good-bye wings of steel!” said Joe gloomily, as he again read the epistle from England. “Let’s see what it is he says,” he mused.

In brief the letter, which was from another attorney than the one who originally had the case, stated that one of the heirs under the will of Mr. Willoughby, who was the father of Joe’s mother, had objected to our hero sharing in the estate, and announced his intention of making Joe pay back the money received.

“I wonder what’s the matter with him, anyhow,” mused Joe as he glanced over the letter. “This [Pg 16]objecting heir got a bigger share than any one else, and yet he isn’t satisfied. He wants mine, too. There is bound to be a lot of litigation over the matter, so this lawyer says,” went on Joe gloomily; “and lawsuits cost money. I wish I were rich enough to go over there and find out things for myself. It isn’t any fun to have to be writing letters back and forth. But it’s the only way. I’ve spent nearly all my spare cash on that machine. If that is a failure, I’m ‘up the spout,’ as the Dutchman said.

“Well, the only thing to do is to keep on and see where I come out. I ought to get the motors in a few days, and then we’ll see what can be done.”

When he had first had his idea for the wings of steel, which he thought would enable him to give even a more spectacular performance than he had given with his motor-cycle on the high wire, Joe had gone to Mr. Brader, the manufacturer who had made his first apparatus, to have him build the flying machine.

At first Mr. Brader, who manufactured much special apparatus for circus performers, had said Joe’s plan was not feasible. But the young performer had insisted on having what he wanted, and as he had made a working plan for the machine, the manufacturer set his men to work on it in his factory.

“And now it’s all but done,” said Joe, as he sat [Pg 17]down to write to the English solicitor. “Only Ben and Bill seem to think I’m going to break my neck with it. Well, I’ll show them that it’s perfectly safe. I’ll soon be flying up near the clouds. It will be great!” And, for the moment, his exultation drove away his gloomy feeling concerning the possible loss of his money.