The Tupelo journal., 1912-01-19
p I.
The Man With Wings.

DeSu HylnS SLOWLY uOIluWdiu uo"h
mild southerly breeze. Hundreds or
feet below him was the dazzling, ter
'rible expanse Of the polar ice pack
which shrouds the northern limits OF
the Arctic ocean in it's impenetrable
veil of mystery.
A compass, q sextant, a bottle OF
milk and a revolver comprised, with
the clothes he wore, n 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 pemm1-
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
isibly, half as far again away, some
where of to the southeast.
. But for these past weeks of un-
broken arctic sunshine, he had fairly
lived awning. The earth had no OBJ
istructions 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 ssSSe that only
Just did not send him staging, head
first, down upon the e1a1n masses OF
ice below, he lay theEN. prone, upon
the s%heep-skin sleeping bag which
padded the framework supporting his
two wings, as secure - the great full
maj petrol which drew cur1ously near,
and then, with a wheel and a plunge.
fed away, sQuawking.
For all practical purposes Cayley
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. 1t had
done yeoman service. Without Its
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 W body gave him all the power
he needed now. q
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-
f1ciency 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 hs
wanted to look IN ahead. 1t had been
q little p%erplexing at first, but he
could see better in it now than with
his unaided eyes.
And now, a minute o 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 a mountain, and a long
dark line that must be a clifflike
coast.
And it was land that never had
been marked on any chart. In abso-
lutte degrees Of latitude he was not,
from the arctic explorers view, very
s. -4vkk Ovor nm thA Nfh0v ufAn NJ
the world they run excursion steam
ers every summer nearer to the pole
than he was at this moment. Spitz-
bergen, which has had a permanent
population of $4,000 souls, lies 800
miles farther north than this IN
charted coast which Philip Cayley saw
before him.
But the great ice cap which covers
the top of the world Is irregular in
shape, and just here, northward from
Alaska, it juts its impenetrable bar
rier far down into the Arctic sea.
Rogers, C~ollinson and the Inflated De-
Long-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, a quarter of a mile. Then,
with a long, flashing, shimmering
sweep, he descended, In the arc of a
great circle, and hung, poised, owe
the land itself and behind the jutting
shoulder of the mountain.
The land was q narrow-necked Pc
ninsula. Mountain and cliff prevented
him from seeing the immediate coast
on the other side OF It; but out a little
way to sea he was amazed to discover
open water, and the smokelike vapor
that he saw rising over the cli6head
made It evident that the opening ex-
tended nearly, If not quite, to the
very lands edge. It was utterly I'M
expected, for the side of the PENN
sula which he had approached was
ace-locked for miles.
He would have lowered again
above the rocky ridge which shut of
his view, and gone to investigate this
,,henomenon at closer range, had
he not, Just then, got the shock Of En-
49, 49, AZ