“We’re aware of that, Mr. Scully,” Bell said with fraying patience.
It had taken all his skill to get George Goethals to allow Bell to borrow the famous plane. Goethals had wanted to send ships out to find the dirigible’s support vessel, and Bell had to convince him it would take too much time. In the end, the Canal Administrator had conceded the point but got Bell to promise that he would only pinpoint the ship’s location so that an armada could then go after it.
Bell had lied the whole time yet felt no guilt. He was going to rescue his wife and no scruples were going to get in his way.
Scully obviously loved machines. He could fix any equipment the Canal Authority had, from the steam shovels and locomotives all the way down to the rotary fan that sat on the desk in his office. Because of this love, he’d spent a great deal of time with Robert Fowler, the plane’s owner and pilot, during the practice flights in preparation for the hop from Panama City on the Pacific Coast to Cristóbal on the Atlantic.
He had arrived leading an old swaybacked horse by its reins. A quartet of five-gallon gas cans were hung from its leather cargo saddle. The animal seemed used to this work and stood quietly while the mechanic unloaded its burden.
“Westbrook, make yourself useful,” Scully began. “There’s a hand pump on the bench over in the corner. Grab that, and there should also be a bunch of specialized wrenches in a cloth roll. I need them to tweak all these rigging wires. They’ve gone slack since Mr. Fowler took her across the isthmus.”
“Got it.”
“Bell, might as well get into the cockpit. That’s the fuel tank there on top of the upper wing.”
Isaac noted that Robert Fowler was always prefaced “Mr.” but he was just “Bell.”
The biplane’s open cockpit was little more than a pair of seats, one in front of the other. The pilot sat behind the passenger, and the controls consisted of a foot bar to swivel the rudder and a stick for his right hand to control the elevators that controlled the aircraft’s pitch. The motor’s water-cooled radiator was directly in front of the passenger’s seat. Bell assumed the photographer had taken his shots out the side of the cockpit.
Sam Westbrook gave the bundle of special wrenches to the mechanic for the exacting job of adjusting the tension of all the rigging wires, which, basically, held the plane together while it was in flight. He handed up the rubber hose connected to the hand pump. Bell unscrewed the filler cap to the teardrop-shaped fuel tank and inserted the hose. Sam unscrewed the cap of the first can, plunged the other end of the hose into its gas, and began to pump the mechanism midway between the two ends.
“Sit yourself down,” Jack Scully said. “You get a lot more leverage that way.”
Sam took his advice, and gasoline was quickly flowing up into the plane’s tank. While he siphoned all four cans into the plane, Scully walked around it and played the rigging wires like a professional harpist. He strummed each wire and listened to the twang it produced and tightened the turnbuckles until he heard the right note and pitch.
He may not have liked Bell or the thought of this flight, but he paid the plane professional attention as someone who loved it. At least, that was Bell’s fervent wish. Though he knew how to pilot a plane, rigging one properly took experience he just didn’t have.
Scully tinkered with the engine for another ten minutes after finishing with the wires. He added oil and checked over all the valves and made certain the radiator was topped off.
Only when he was satisfied did they fire the motor. It lit on just the second crank and roared like a lion. Even with chocks holding the wheels of the trolley the plane was sitting on from moving, the plane itself felt like it wanted to take to the air. Bell couldn’t keep a smile from his face despite the significance of this flight.
He choked the engine to silence, after a minute’s test, and the prop juddered to a stop.
“Any chance I can talk you into taking me?” Sam asked as Bell jumped down from the cockpit. “Four eyes are better than two.”
“I might as well be straight with you now,” Bell said when Jack Scully was out of earshot. He was hitching the trolley carrying the plane to the horse so it could tow it out to the water.
“What do you mean?”
“I lied back in Colonel Goethals’s office. It’s a big ocean out there. I don’t stand a chance in hell of finding that ship. Needle in a haystack would be a piece of cake by comparison.”
“If not there, where are you going?”
“That’s what I was doing all day in the map room. Old Jeremiah Townsend and I picked the two most likely spots Talbot would rendezvous with the airship. I can fly there in under two hours.”
“And then what?”
“Wait for the Zeppelin to show and follow it back to the ship.”
“Clever, Mr. Bell. So why not take me?”
Bell explained. “The more weight the plane carries, the more fuel she burns. I’m going to need every drop of gasoline if this is going to work.”
Bell pointed to the one-man canoe he’d secured to the lower wing. “Plus, I’m bringing that.”
“You never explained why.”
“We identified two likely places. I have to assume Talbot loiters in the area while he’s waiting for the Zeppelin’s night flight. I can’t get too close in a noisy airplane. When I check out the valleys, I’ll land out of range and paddle in. If I find no evidence that Talbot’s
