The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
reticent; smooth of hair and cameo of face; wearing khaki
riding-breeches and tan puttees instead of overalls; always a
gentleman, even when he tried to appear a workman. He pretended to be
enthusiastic about the lunch-wagon, and never referred to his three
generations of army officers. But most of the others were shy of him,
and Jack Ryan, the "school grouch," was always trying to get him into
a fight.
Finally, there was Carl Ericson, who slowly emerged as star of them
all. He knew less of aerodynamics than the timid specialist, less of
practical mechanics than Hank Odell; but he loved the fun of daring
more. He was less ferocious in competition than was Jack Ryan, but he
wasted less of his nerve. He was less agile than the circus acrobat,
but knew more of motors. He was less compactly easy than Lieutenant
Haviland, but he took better to overalls and sleeping in hangars and
mucking in grease--he whistled ragtime while Forrest Haviland hummed
MacDowell.
* * * * *
Carl's earliest flights were in the school machine, "P'tite Marie,"
behind Carmeau, the instructor. Reporters were always about, talking
of "impressions," and Carl felt that he ought to note his impressions
on his first ascent, but all that he actually did notice was that it
was hard to tell at what instant they left the ground; that when they
were up, the wind threatened to crush his ribs and burst his nostrils;
that there must be something perilously wrong, because the machine
climbed so swiftly; and, when they were down, that it had been worth
waiting a whole lifetime for the flight.
For days he merely flew with the instructor, till he was himself
managing the controls. At last, his first flight by himself.
He had been ordered to try a flight three times about the aerodrome at
a height of sixty feet, and to land carefully, without pancaking--"and
be sure, Monsieur, be veree sure you do not cut off too high from the
ground," said Carmeau.
It was a day when five reporters had gathered, and Carl felt very much
in the limelight, waiting in the nacelle of the machine for the time
to start. The propeller was revolved, Carl drew a long breath and
stuck up his hand--and the engine stopped. He was relieved. It had
seemed a terrific responsibility to go up alone. He wouldn't, now, not
for a minute or two. He knew that he had been afraid. The engine was
turned over once more--and once more stopped. Carl raged, and never
again, in all his flying, did real fear return to him. "What the deuce
is the matter?" he snarled. Again the propeller was revolved, and this
time the engine hummed sweet. The monoplane ran along the ground, its
tail lifting in the blast, till the whole machine seemed delicately
poised on its tiptoes. He was off the ground, his rage leaving him as
his fear had left him.
He exulted at the swiftness with which a distant group of trees shot
at him, under him. He turned, and the machine mounted a little on the
turn, which was against the rules. But he brought her to even keel so
easily that he felt all the mastery of the man who has finally learned
to be natural on a bicycle. He tilted up the elevator slightly and
shot across a series of fields, climbing. It was perfectly easy. He
would go up--up. It was all automatic now--cloche toward him for
climbing; away from him for descent; toward the wing that tipped up,
in order to bring it down to level. The machine obeyed perfectly. And
the foot-bar, for steering to right and left, responded to such light
motions of his foot. He grinned exultantly. He wanted to shout.
He glanced at the barometer and discovered that he was up to two
hundred feet. Why not go on?
He sailed out across San Mateo, and the sense of people below, running
and waving their hands, increased his exultation. He curved about at
the end, somewhat afraid of his ability to turn, but having all the
air there was to make the turn in, and headed back toward the
aerodrome. Already he had flown five miles.
Half a mile from the aerodrome he realized that his motor was
slackening, missing fire; that he did not know what was the matter;
that his knowledge had left him stranded there, two hundred feet above
ground; that he had to come down at once, with no chance to choose a
landing-place and no experience in gliding. The motor stopped
altogether.
The ground was coming up at him too quickly.
He tilted the elevator, and rose. But, as he was volplaning, this cut
down the speed, and from a height of ten feet above a field the
machine dropped to the ground with a flat plop. Something gave
way--but Carl sat safe, with the machine canted to one side.
He climbed out, cold about the spine, and discovered that he had
broken one wheel of the landing-chassis.
All the crowd from the flying-field were running toward him, yelling.
He grinned at the foolish sight they made with their legs and arms
strewn about in the air as they galloped over the rough ground.
Lieutenant Haviland came up, panting: "All right, o' man? Good!" He
seized Carl's hand and wrung it. Carl knew that he had a new friend.
Three reporters poured questions on him. How far had he flown? Was
this really his first ascent by himself? What were his sensations? How
had his motor stopped? Was it true he was a mining engineer, a wealthy
motorist?
Hank Odell, the shy, eagle-nosed Yankee, running up as jerkily as a
cow in a plowed field, silently patted Carl on the shoulder and began
to examine the fractured landing-wheel. At last the instructor, M.
Carmeau.
Carl had awaited M. Carmeau's praise as the crown of his long flight.
But Carmeau pulled his beard, opened his mouth once or twice, then
shrieked: "What the davil you t'ink you are? A millionaire that we
build machines for you to smash them? I tole you to fly t'ree time
around--you fly to Algiers an' back--you t'ink you are another Farman
brother--you are a damn fool! Suppose your motor he stop while you fly
over San Mateo? Where you land? In a well? In a chimney? _Hein?_ You
know naut'ing yet. Next time you do what I tal' you. _Zut!_ That was a
flight, a flight, you make a flight, that was fine, fine, you make the
heart to swell. But nex' time you break the chassis and keel yourself,
_nom d'un tonnerre_, I scol' you!"
Carl was humble. But the _Courier_ reporter spread upon the front page
the story of "Marvelous first flight by Bagby student," and predicted
that a new Curtiss was coming out of California. Under a half-tone ran
the caption, "Ericson, the New Hawk of the Birdmen."
The camp promptly nicknamed him "Hawk." They used it for plaguing him
at first, but it survived as an expression of fondness--Hawk Ericson,
the cheeriest man in the school, and the coolest flier.
CHAPTER XIX
Not all their days were spent in work. There were mornings when the
wind would not permit an ascent and when there was nothing to do in
the workshop. They sat about the lunch-wagon wrangling endlessly, or,
like Carl and Forrest Haviland, wandered through fields which were all
one flame with poppies.
Lieutenant Haviland had given up trying to feel comfortable with the
naval ensign student, who was one of the solemn worthies who clear
their throats before speaking, and then speak in measured terms of
brands of cigars and weather. Gradually, working side by side with
Carl, Haviland seemed to find him a friend in whom to confide. Once or
twice they went by trolley to San Francisco, to explore Chinatown or
drop in on soldier friends of Haviland at the Presidio.
* * * * *
From the porch of a studio on Telegraph Hill, in San Francisco, they
were looking down on the islands of the bay, waiting for the return of
an artist whom Haviland knew. Inarticulate dreamers both, they
expressed in monosyllables the glory of bluewater before them, the
tradition of R. L. S. and Frank Norris, the future of aviation. They
gave up the attempt to explain the magic of San Francisco--that
city-personality which transcends the opal hills and rare amber
sunlight, festivals, and the transplanted Italian hill-town of
Telegraph Hill, liners sailing out for Japan, and memories of the
Forty-niners. It was too subtle a spirit, too much of it lay in human
life with the passion of the Riviera linked to the strength of the
North, for them to be able to comprehend its spell.... But regarding
their own ambitions to do, they became eloquent.
"I say," hesitated Haviland, "why is it I can't get in with most of
the fellows at the camp the way you can? I've always been chummy
enough with the fellows at the Point and at posts."
"Because you've been brought up to be afraid to be anything but a
gentleman."
"Oh, I don't think it's that. I can get fond as the deuce of some of
the commonest common soldiers--and, Lord! some of them come from the
Bowery and all sorts of impossible places."
"Yes, but you always think of them as 'common.' They don't think of
each other that way. Suppose I'd worked----Well, just suppose I'd been
a Bowery bartender. Could you be loafing around here with me? Could
you go off on a bat with Jack Ryan?"
"Well, maybe not. Maybe working with Jack Ryan is a good thing for me.
I'm getting now so I can almost stand his stories! I envy you,
knocking around with all sorts of people. Oh, I _wish_ I could call
Ryan 'Jack' and feel easy about it. I can't. Perhaps I've got a little
of the subaltern snob some place in me."
"You? You're a prince."
"If you've elevated me to a princedom, the least I can do is to invite
you down home for a week-end--down to the San Spirito Presidio. My
father's commandant there."
"Oh, I'd like to, but----I haven't got a dress-suit."
"Buy one."
"Yes, I could do that, but----Oh, rats! Forrest, I've been knocking
around so long I feel shy about my table manners and everything. I'd
probably eat pie with my fingers."
"You make me so darn tired, Hawk. You talk about my having to learn to
chum with people in overalls. You've got to learn not to let people in
evening clothes put anything over on you. That's your difficulty from
having lived in the back-country these last two or three years. You
have an instinct for manners. But I did notice that as soon as you
found out I was in the army you spent half the time disliking me as a
militarist, and the other half expecting me to be haughty--Lord knows
what over. It took you two weeks to think of me as Forrest Haviland.
I'm ashamed of you! If you're a socialist you ought to think that
anything you like belongs to you."
"That's a new kind of socialism."
"So much the better. Me and Karl Marx, the economic inventors.... But
I was saying: if you act as though things belong to you people will
apologize to you for having borrowed them from you. And you've _got_
to do that, Hawk. You're going to be one of the best-known fliers in
the country, and you'll have to meet all sorts of big guns--generals
and Senators and female climbers that work the peace societies for
social position, and so on, and you've got to know how to meet
them.... Anyway, I want you to come to San Spirito."
To San Spirito they went. During the three days preceding, Carl was
agonized at the thought of having to be polite in the presence of
ladies. No matter how brusquely he told himself, "I'm as good as
anybody," he was uneasy about forks and slang and finger-nails, and
looked forward to the ordeal with as much pleasure as a man about to
be hanged, hanged in a good cause, but thoroughly.
Yet when Colonel Haviland met them at San Spirito station, and Carl
heard the kindly salutation of the gracious, fat, old Indian-fighter,
he knew that he had at last come home to his own people--an impression
that was the stronger because the house of Oscar Ericson had been so