CHAPTER I DAVID CHOOSES

David Ellison would never forget his last night at prep school. He had had a hard time explaining to his three best friends that his plans for college had failed. Lolling on the grass in the pleasant June dusk, enjoying the comfortable relaxation after the hectic hours of Commencement Day, he had put off the evil moment as long as he possibly could. Finally he exploded his bomb.

“Well, fellows,” he said, “I am not going to college after all.”

There was a silence. Three pairs of eyes regarded the speaker blankly.

“The heat,” said a tall boy in a hushed tone, laying a hand on David’s unruly hair.

“It’s that little girl he danced with four times yesterday at the tea,” a second remarked mournfully.

“It’s because he leads the Honor Roll. He thinks he knows it all now,” jeered the third; then, “Kidding aside, Davie,” he said, “what’s up?”

David hesitated, then took the plunge.

“Darn it!” he said. “Of course I owe it to you three fellows to give you all the dope, but I certainly hate to drag my affairs in. Still, after all our planning I can’t leave you without an explanation. You know I live in Denver with my mother and two sisters. Boys, I’ve got the finest mother, and the sweetest kid sisters. Mother works. She never gets a vacation; couldn’t even come to my Commencement. Gosh! It made me sick. And my older sister (she’s sixteen) has heard me tell all about you fellows, and she was so crazy to see you, and the school, and everything. But they couldn’t make it. Too much car fare.”

“Why, you big stiff!” cried the tall boy angrily. “Why didn’t you say something? Mother and father came right through Denver. All your folks could have come on with them in the car.”

“Yes,” said David, “I know, and I certainly appreciate it, but they couldn’t very well—”

“But what about college, Dave?” asked the tall boy impatiently.

“I’ll have to start away back,” said David. “My father was an army officer—a captain in the Air Corps. He went through the war without a scratch until the day before the Armistice. There was a big raid, and—well, dad crashed. Shot down. He had nothing but his pay, and only ten thousand dollars war risk insurance. We were in Washington when it happened. Mother took us back to Denver, where she had some relatives, and invested the insurance money in a little business. She has a shop where she sells things for women—a Specialty Shop, they call it. She makes enough to keep herself and the girls and give me just a little help once in a while. I don’t know when I haven’t worked at something to help pay my way and, as you know, I’ve been lucky enough to meet all my own expenses here.”

David chuckled as his memory took him back over the past four years. What hadn’t he tackled! Band man, coach, bookkeeper, tutor, telephone operator, handy man around the house—anything and everything. He had made his tuition and clothes, and hadn’t cost his mother a cent. Of course, he had worked summers too, but he had always found a job near home so he could be near the family.

“Now as you know,” he continued, “I was all set for college, with jobs enough cinched to get me through all right, especially as I was to share your quarters, but I have just found out that the girls have given up their plans for college, so that I can go! I had a letter from my little sister, and she spilled the beans. Poor kid, she didn’t know it! I’m going to work; going to earn real money. There’s a wholesale grocer in Denver who will give me a job, I think.”

“But the big balloons, David; what about them?”

“They will have to fly without yours truly. Gosh! Well, I can always read about ’em; that will be some comfort. And it takes quite a knack to count bags of sugar.” He smiled wryly.

“Well, we are all darned sorry,” said the tall boy. “Guess you know that, Dave, without our blubbering.”

David got up.

“Yes, I know it. But I’ve got to face hard facts. Don’t think I’m squealing. Honest, I’m glad to do it, even if it is disappointing.” He squared his shoulders. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “I’d better go by-by now; my train leaves at six-thirty. I’ll stick my head in your rooms on my way off. So long!”

An hour later, sitting by his open window, David listened to the strains of the band over in the gymnasium and watched the stars. He had the feeling that he was swinging in a void. Every task and duty connected with the school was finished. He had just jumped on his trunk and locked it. It was ready to be dragged out into the hall for the expressman to take at dawn. Another boy was filling his place in the band. Football, basketball, tennis—they were all dreams, never to touch reality again, even when he should look at the team photographs cherished between stiff cardboards in his trunk.

A small apologetic rap sounded on his door. No one ever knocked in the natural course of events. Surprised, David opened it, snapping on the light as he did so. The three boys stood there, leaning heavily on one another’s shoulders.

“Hello!” said the foremost. “’Fraid you would be in bed.”

“No, just picking up loose ends,” said David. “Glad you happened along. Take an end of this trunk, will you, and let’s heave it into the hall.”

“What’s in it, bricks?” asked one, as they placed the trunk in the corridor. They came in, and shut the door.

“I suppose you want to go to bed,” said the tall boy, “but we have a plan to put up to you, and we were afraid that there would be so much confusion in the morning that you might not see it straight. And I’m doing the talking now, so you’ll kindly shut up until I am all through. And be reasonable! Fact is, old man, we want you to borrow the cost of your college course from us. Now wait!” he demanded, as David shook his head. “Try to listen, you blithering idiot! We all have plenty of money, and we want to stake you; just as if you were our own brother, Dave. Listen! It’s like this: take the money, and keep the jobs you have planned on. They will float you, and you can send the cash home, and the girls can go to college, and everything will be jake. See?”

“I can’t take it,” said David, touched and amused at the same time. “If that is what brought you, just save your breath. You are the best friends a fellow ever had, and it is worth giving up more than I have given up to find it out. But I don’t want your money. I can’t take anybody’s money. I haven’t a cent of my own beside my car fare and ten dollars for meals, and I am going to start square with myself and the whole world.

“Get this, fellows; I am just as grateful as I can be, and I’ll never forget it. But I’m not going to be carried along by my friends. I won’t be a sap, or a sucker, or a leech. I’ll work my own way up, and boy! just watch my dust!” He shook each one by the hand and somehow, before they knew it, they were in the hall.

Davie, ready for bed, tired with their kindly insistence, wondered if they would come in the night, and pin large checks on his pajama coat!

“Well, I won’t borrow, and I won’t sponge on my mother,” David declared grimly to himself. “I’ll show what I can do. I won’t be carried along. I’ll arrive somewhere, some day, on my own two feet, and not on the shoulders of somebody else. I’ll make those fellows darned proud of me yet!”

Outside David’s door lay his boyhood, his flaming hopes, his fondest memories. All his life he had meant to be an aviator. He had thought of it, studied for it, and concentrated on it; but his skies were empty now. No majestic forms floated grandly across his horizon. Vanished were the dream-ships which he had meant to make real. Gone were his shining hopes, his resolves to follow in his father’s footsteps. Not for him, in future days, to build ships such as the world had never seen. He determined to destroy all the careful plans and experiments he had so neatly drawn. In the bottom of his trunk were a score of technical books on dirigibles, past and present, bought at long intervals with hard-earned money. For it was the dirigible toward which David’s heart yearned. The great majestic balloons held a charm for him that the busy, flitting airplanes were powerless to wield. But he knew that he had made the right decision; and knowing it, slept well.

Reaching home, it took much argument on David’s part before his adoring family was resigned to his change of plans; but he was all the more determined when he saw how worn his mother’s still lovely face had grown.

His friend the wholesale grocer was away. However, the manager said that he would be back in a few days and assured David that a good job was waiting for him. On the long, tedious trolley ride home, David had time to think. At school, he could always hop some fellow’s car. Easy and pleasant. He’d never given it a thought, but that was sponging in a way. Well, never again; never! He made a wry face at a cat on a gatepost. Lord! he was slated to be poor—filthy poor, for many a long year. It couldn’t be too many years, though.

He must make money. His mother didn’t look right. Of course, the wholesale groceries might give him a good break. Lots of fellows had begun at the very bottom and had soared up.

Soared—that brought his mind to the ships again. It would always be like that, he knew. He’d go along, almost contented, working like the devil and getting on in groceries, but underneath he’d always be thinking about the ships, the roar of the engines, the feel of the rushing air. And he couldn’t do that—not if he meant to make a good grocer. A good grocer! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Something would have to be done!

By the time he reached home the pendulum had swung again. He couldn’t give up his ships. Why, he was kin to every dirigible, every balloon, every little fat blimp that adventured into the upper tides! He couldn’t give them up. As well ask a sailor to go inland and hoe turnips. As well ask a violinist to drive rivets for a living. Well, he’d hoe turnips, drive rivets; hoe fast and drive hard. He was no shirk.

Quite simply and trustingly, David turned to that Great Source upon whom strong hearts are not ashamed to call. “Help me to find a way!” he whispered.

After dinner, while turning the pages of a magazine David chanced on an article on dirigibles. He commenced to read it. Parts of it he reread, scarcely believing his eyes. He gave a whoop of delight.

“The very thing!” he cried. “Mother, listen to this!”

“What is it?” cried Mrs. Ellison and his older sister Lydia.

“Something big! Just listen!” David’s face glowed with excitement. “Today I went over to Black & Black’s to see about a job. They will take me on at fifteen bucks a week, and a chance for a raise occasionally. But they wouldn’t sign me on today because the Mr. Black who attends to such things is away, thank goodness!”

“Why ‘thank goodness’?” said Lydia.

“This magazine says Goodlow & Company, at Ayre, Ohio, have expanded into the largest dirigible works in the world; and owing to the necessity of having expert pilots and mechanics, they are about to open a school for novices. It is a four-year course, in four departments. First year, ground work; second year, construction and development; third year, balloon fabrics and gases; and fourth year, intensive piloting.

“Some rich guy has already posted a big prize to be competed for by the students, for the best invention that will add to the safety of dirigible navigation. And there is a prize in each department given at the close of each year, for the student who has done the best work. They will accept only a limited number of students, and what do you know about this? They pay ’em real money, with bigger salaries, of course, as they go along.”

“Why, they couldn’t afford to do that, could they, David?” inquired his mother.

“Yes, because the students are at first really laborers and then mechanics in a small way—apprentices to the real big fellows until they acquire skill themselves. Mother, if I can make it, it will fix everything. The students have their quarters at the plant; dormitories, I suppose. It is rather like being in the army. Pretty stiff discipline, and all that. There won’t be any expenses to speak of, and I can send home almost every cent they give me.”

“But flying, Davie!” said Mrs. Ellison, her beautiful soft eyes filled with tears. “Flying! I have hoped so that you wouldn’t fly.”

“Mother darling,” said David gently, “I know how you must feel, but this is not war time. It is peace that needs the dirigible. It is the greatest invention; the greatest—Oh, I am crazy about it! Father would tell me to go on, wouldn’t he, mother?”

“Yes, he would indeed,” Mrs. Ellison said proudly, with a tremulous smile.

“When do you have to start, Davie?” asked his younger sister, Patty.

“Patty seems to have decided it,” laughed Mrs. Ellison.

“The examinations for enrollment are only four days from today,” said David ruefully.

“At Ayre, Ohio!” cried Lydia. “My goodness! Dave, you will have to start tonight. And what will you start on? Has anybody got any money?”

“I have the Liberty Bond father bought me,” said David.

Mrs. Ellison’s eyes filled, but Lydia jumped up and danced around the room.

“The very thing!” she cried. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Father would so love to stake you in this. Come on, mother, get out his bond, and while you and David go out and get somebody to cash it, I will pack his things, and see to reservations.”

She looked at her mother, and sensed something wrong.

“You approve, don’t you, mother? You will let him fly? We will be so proud of him. Why, this is better than a dozen colleges.”

“A school for apprentices,” mused Mrs. Ellison. “That really means greater safety for future ships, doesn’t it? It is a wonderful thing.”

“It is not a new idea,” said David. “They opened one in Friedrichshafen, Germany, during the war. It has been a great success. Friedrichshafen is the cradle of the dirigible. We have army and navy schools here in this country, but this school is to fit civilians for commercial flying, and is run on what you might call a co-operative basis. I wondered if we would ever wake up over here to the necessity of schools like that. And now—well, I bet in three or four years there will be a dozen schools scattered all over the United States.”

“Dave, it’s just great!” cried Lydia.

David looked anxiously toward his mother.

“Well, what’s the good word, mother? Do I go?”

For a long moment Mrs. Ellison seemed lost in thought. This boy was her only son. How much safer it would be to “measure coffee, and count sugar sacks.” Her only son; but he was his father’s son as well! Brave, intrepid Rick Ellison had a share in this boy. So she spoke for them both, and smiled.

“Go, of course, David,” she said.

CHAPTER II LORD CRAM

David found the trip to Ayre tedious; the hours dragged interminably. His first night was sleepless, and he went into the dining-car for breakfast rather late. He slipped into an empty seat at one of the small tables for two. He found himself seated across from a thin, dark young man a little older than himself. His pleasant good-morning was returned by a mumbled greeting as the stranger glanced up, then hurriedly transferred his attention to his food. He ate importantly, seeming to put a vast amount of ceremony into the homely order of bacon and eggs before him.

David ordered breakfast, and commenced to study his time-table. When he laid it down, the stranger leaned across and remarked, “I meant to get a time-table and forgot it. May I see yours?”

David handed it over with a pleasant word. The stranger, swaying to the motion of the fast train, opened the folder. David had marked stops and changes, and had drawn a black line around Ayre. The chap looked up, and caught David’s eye.

“Ayre your destination?” he asked, and at David’s nod he continued, “That’s where I am going, too. My name is Cram—Walter Cram.”

“My name is Ellison,” said David, “Glad to meet you.”

“Ellison,” said Walter Cram. “Not a very—well, I don’t know any Ellison, myself. Never heard the name but once. I’ve got a book, ‘Great Pilots of the World War.’ There is a pilot in that book named Ellison. A great chap; absolutely fearless; did the most amazing things. His career reads like a fairy story. You ought to get that book and read about him. It would interest you on account of the coincidence of the name.”

“I expect it would,” said David.

Cram, once started, chatted on. He ran an appraising eye over David’s neat but not new suit, his correct but worn hat, his well-kept but muscular hands. He pulled out a watch, white gold, thin and racy-looking in its general correctness.

“What time you got?” he asked.

David, with a smile, obligingly bit. He hauled out a large fat silver timepiece on the turnip order, and gravely offered its moon face for Cram’s inspection.

“Heirloom?” asked Cram compassionately.

“My grandfather’s,” replied David.

“How the old fellows loved those turnips!” said Cram. “I had an old hick of a grandfather, a farmer out in the sticks. He had one of those, and we couldn’t make him give it up. Same with yours, I suppose.”

“No, he wouldn’t give it up,” said David. “Used it all his life, then gave it to me.” What use to tell Cram how that watch had been carried by its intrepid owner into Africa, and through the jungles of South America? It had lived in China, had skirted the steppes of Russia, had been shipwrecked, and shot at. The dent on its fat back was the mark of a poisoned arrow in Australia. No, his grandfather had never given it up until, called at last to explore a far more distant and unknown country, his dying hand had pressed it into the baby grasp of his grandson.

“Sentiment is a blamed poor thing,” Cram declared; then, as if he had been too friendly, he rose abruptly, nodded and with a brief “See you later,” went off, carrying the newspaper, and David’s time-table as well.

With a sigh of relief, David tackled his bacon and eggs, and a second man slid into the vacant seat. He looked directly at David with a pair of keen blue eyes, around which curled thick fair lashes. His shock of reddish-gold hair had been struggled with, but not subdued. His wide grin disclosed dazzling white teeth, whiter by contrast with the deep sunburn of his skin.

“Mind if I sit here, Buddy?” he asked cheerily.

“Not a bit,” said David, smiling in return.

“Name’s Ryan,” said the blond husky. “Kenneth Ryan.”

“I’m David Ellison,” said David, warming at once to the honest face and clear gaze.

“Glad to meet you,” said Ryan, extending his hard and muscular hand. He studied the menu card anxiously. “These here mennoos!” he groaned. “What makes ’em have so many things to pick from? When I’m home I eat at delicatessens, or Childs’; but this! Damfino what to choose!”

“I had oatmeal, and bacon and eggs, and cakes,” said David helpfully.

“Bully!” said Ryan. He looked up at the waiter. “The same,” he said, waving a comprehensive hand toward David’s place. Then he settled his elbows on the table.

“I seen you talking to Lord Cram,” he chuckled.

“For a few minutes,” said David. “You know him?”