The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1911-05-25
CHAPTER !.
The Man With Winns.

TIC Wdn WIN wings.
For many hours-CayIey was too
much of a god today to bother with
the exact number of them-he had
been flying slowly nOrthward down a
mild sOutherly breeze. Hundreds of
feet below him was the dazzling, ter
rible expanse of the polar ice pack
which shrouds the northern limits of
the Arctic ocean in its impenetrable
veil of mystery.
A compass, seXtant, a bottle of
milk and a revolver comprised, with
the clothes he wore, and with the
shimmering silken wings of his areo-
plane, his whole equipment. His near
est base of supplies, if you could call
1t that, was a 20-pound tin of pemmi-
can, hidden under a stone on the
north east extremity of Herald island,
300 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 pos
sibly, half as far again away, some
where off to the southeast.
But for these past weeks of I'M
broken arctic sunshine, he had fairly
lived awning. The earth had no OBJ
structions and the air no perils. To
day with his great broad fan-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, head
first, down upon the sullen masses of
ice below, he lay there. prone upon
the sheep-skin sleeping bag which
padded the framework supporting his
two wings, as secure as the great full
mar petrol which drew curiously near,
and then, with wheel and a plunge,
fed away, squawking.
For all practical purposes CayIey
had learned to fly. The great fan
driven air ship. 100 feet from tip to
tip, which had long lain idle on his
ranch at Sandoval would probably
never leave its house again. It had
done yeoman service Without it's
powerful propellers, for the last re-
source, Cayley would never have been
able to try the experiments and get
the practise which had given him the
air for his natural element. He had
outgrown it. He had no more need
of motors or whirling fans. The force
of gravity. the force of the breeze and
the perfectly co-ordinated muscles OF
his own body gave him all the power
he needed now.
Perhaps the succeeding generations
of humankind may develop an eye
which can see ahead when the body
is lying 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
crossbrace which supported his shout
ders. Instead of bending back his
head. or trying to see out through his
eyebrows. he simply cast a backward
glance into this mirror whenever he
wanted to look on ahead 1t had been
q little perpleXing at first, but he
could see better in it 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
row. 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 Il mountain, and long
dark line that must be a clifflike
coast.
And it was land that never had
been marked on any chart In abso-
iute degrees of latitude he was not,
from the arctic explorers view, very
far north. Over on the other side of
the world they run excursion steam
ers every summer nearer to the pole
than be WAS at this moment Spitz-