The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1910-07-17
CHAPTER |.
THE MAN WITH WINGS.


flying slowly northward down Il mild
southerly breeze. Hundreds of feet be
low him was the dazzling, terrible cx
panse of the polar ice pack whlcE
shrouds the northern limits of tho Arc
tic ocean in its impenetrable veil OF
mystery
Cayley was alone, as no man before
ever had been alone, for the planet
which spun beneath him seemed to him
aloft there in the empyTeun. rs re
mote as Mars or as the Pleiades. Its
mountains, its ercvassed valleys and
its seas, the little huddled clumps of
houses called towns, the small labor
rows.-all amused him with whimsi-
cal sense of pity. And most of all
those human dot-lil1e grubs, to whose
family he had belonged until he found
his wingsi
A compass, sextunt. n bottle of milk
and revolver comprised, with the
clothes he wore, and with the simmer
ing silken wings of his aeroplane, his
whole equipment. His nearest base of
supplies, if You could call 1t that, was
n twenty pound tin of pemmican, hid
den under stone on the northeast ex-
tremity of Herald Island. three hun
dred miles away. The United States
Rescue Station at Point Barrow, the
extreme northerly point of Alaska, the
place which he had called home for
the past three months, was. possibly.
half as far again away, somewhere or
to the southeast.
But to Caylcy, in his .present. mood,
Importance Never again. perhaps,
would the mastery Of the air bring
him n sense of happiness so godlike in
It's serenity, so ecstatlc in Its eXhllara-
tion For the thing was perfect, and
vet it ~ new, Only with his arrival
ut Poin Barrow at the beginning of
this spnmer had his flight been free
from the thrill of momentary peril, Some
sudden buffet of wind would tax his
skill and nerve to the utmost. a flight
before the wind. even with n constant,
steady breeze, had been n precarious
business.
But for these past weeks Of .unbroken
Arctic sunshine, he had fairly lived
a-wing. The earth had no INSTRUCTIONS
and the air no perils. Today, with his
great broad fnn-tail drawn up arc
wise beneath him, his planes pitched
slightly forward at the precise and
perilous angle that only Just did not
send him plunging. he lay there, prone,
upon The sheep-skin sleeping bag which
two wings, as secure as the great full
mar petrol which drew curiously near,
and then, with wheel and a plunge,
fled away. squawking.
Cayley would not say that he had
learned to flv; he would still insist
that he was learning. And. in a sense,
this was true Almost every day elder,
gull. cormorant or albatross taught him
some new trick of technique in steer
ing, soaring or wheeling. perhaps. in
n tricky cross-current of air. Even
that fulmar. which had fled in such
ungainlv haste, had given him new
idea of aerostatics to amuse himself
with.
But for all practical purposes Cayley
had learned to fly The great fan
driven air shin. 100 feet from tip TO
tip, which had long lain idle on his
ranch at Sandoval, would probably never
leave its house again. 1t had done
yoeman service. Without it's powerful
propelers, for a last resource, Cayley
the experiments and get the practice
which had given him the air for his
natural element. He had outgrown it.
He had no more need Of motors OF
whirling fans. The force of gravity,
the force Of the breeze and the per
fectly co-drdinated muscles of his own
body gave him all the power he need
ed now.
And what marvellous power it was!
He had never believed before the state
ment of men Of science, that the great
gray. northern geese can sail the arr
ut eighty miles an hour. He knew it
now. He had overtaken them.
Perhaps, the succeeding, generations
of humankind may develop an eye
is living prone, as a bird lies in its
flight. Cayley had remedied this de-
ficiency with A little silver mirror,
slightly concave. screwed fast to the
cross brace which supported his shoul-
ders. Instead of bending back. his
head, or trying to see out through his
eyebrows. he simply cast backward
glance into this mirror whenever he
wanted to look on ahead. 1t had been
a little perple1ing ut first, but he
could see better In 1t now than with
his unaided eyes.
And now, minute or two, perhaps,
after that fulmar had gone squawking
away. he glanced down into his mir.
ror. and his olympian calm was shaken
with the shock OF surprise. For what
he saw, clearly reflected in his little
reducing glass, was land. There was
"a mountain, and long dark line that
must be a clifflike coast.
And it was land that never had been
marked on any chart. In absolute de-
gTees Of latitude he was not from the
Arctic explorers view. very far north.
Over on the other side of the world
they run excursion steamers every sum
mer nearer to the pole than he was at
this moment. Spitzbergen, which has
had permanent population Of fifteen
thousand souls. lies three hundred miles
farther north than this uncharted coast
which Philip Cayley saw before him.
But the great ice gap which covers
the top Of the world is irregular in
shape, and Just here, northward from
Alaska, it ints it's impcnetrable barrier
far down into the Arctic sea. Rogers,
Collinson and the ill-fated DoLopg,-
they all had tried TO penetrate this
barrier, and had been turned back.
Cayley wheeled sharply up into the
wind and scared aloft to a height of,
perhaps, quarter of a mile. Then,
with long, flashing, shimmering sweep
he descended, in the arc of great
circle and hung. poised, over the land
itself and behind the iutting shoulder
of the mountain.
The land was narrow-necked PENN
sula. Mountain and cliff prevented
him from seeing the immediate coast
on the other side of it; but out lit
tie way to sea he was amazed to dis
cover open water, and the smoke like
vapor that he saw rising over the cliff
head made it evident that the opening
extended nearly, if NOT quite, to the