CHAPTER II

QUICK WORK

Red tongues of fire were darting from many parts of a spacious and
handsome house that stood in the midst of a considerable estate. Columns
of black smoke were rising in the air and some shreds of it wove in and
out of the plane.

Recovering from his moment of stupefaction, Ted Scott shot quick glances
about for a landing place.

He could not come down in the grounds immediately surrounding the house,
because of the shrubs and trees. At a little distance to the right,
however, was a fairly level field. Ted made for this. He pushed on the
stick and the nose of the plane turned downward. The young aviator
selected what seemed to be the best space for landing and brought the
plane down lightly. It ran along for a way and stopped. Before it had
come to a complete pause Ted had flung himself out of it and was running
with all his speed toward the house, in which the flames were steadily
gaining headway.

Even as he ran, it occurred to Ted that it was strange there was no
human figure to be seen. A place so large must have required quite a
staff of servants, and it was natural to expect that some of these would
be in evidence.

But there were no frantic people about, no screams, none of the signs of
terror that such a catastrophe usually invoked. Perhaps, Ted thought as
he sped along, the house was closed for the summer. He ardently hoped
that such might be the case.

But as he neared the imperiled structure his ears were greeted by
piercing screams.

“Save me! Save me!” came in shrieks of mortal terror.

He looked in vain at first for the source of the screams. The crackling
of the blaze made it difficult to locate the sounds.

They did not come from the front of the house, which was fully enveloped
in flames and smoke.

He raced around the right side of the house. There was no one there. To
the left. Then he knew whence the shrieks were coming.

Leaning from a window in the third story was a woman of middle age. Her
face was contorted with deadly fear. At every instant she looked behind
her to see if the flames were encroaching on the room in which she had
taken refuge. From her throat came scream after scream.

She caught sight of Ted and her shrieks redoubled in volume. She leaned
far out and held out her arms to him.

“Save me!” she screamed. “Save me!”

“I will,” Ted shouted back.

He looked frantically about for a ladder. There was none to be seen.

“Hurry! Hurry!” urged the woman. “The door is burning down!”

In her desperation she climbed up on the window sill, as though she
intended to leap out.

“Don’t jump!” shouted Ted. “You’ll be killed if you do. Wait! I’ll get
to you.”

His eyes had lighted on a great tree standing near, one of whose heavy
boughs came close to the window in which the woman was standing.

He knew that there was no chance of getting through the front of the
house and reaching the room. The stairway must be a mass of flames. No
one could go through that way and live. The tree was the only hope. A
forlorn hope, perhaps, but the only one.

Ted threw off his coat, rushed to the tree and began to climb.

While the young aviator is making his way up with all the power of his
muscular arms and legs, it may be well, for the benefit of those who
have not read the preceding volumes of this series, to tell who Ted
Scott was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story
opens.

Ted had no memory of his father or mother. He had been brought, an
orphaned child, to Bromville, a thriving town in the Middle West, by
James and Miranda Wilson, a couple who had migrated with him from New
England. They had few worldly goods, but were wholesome, kindly people
who sent the child to school and did all they could for his comfort and
well being. They died within a few months of each other when Ted was
about ten years old, and the little fellow was left to the tender
mercies of the world.

The forlorn condition of the little waif touched the hearts of Eben and
Charity Browning, a childless couple, and they adopted Ted as their own.
They were goodness itself to him, and he loved them as devotedly as
though they had been his real parents.

Eben Browning, hale, friendly, upright, was the proprietor of the
Bromville House, a hotel that had once been the leading one of the town.
Eben’s geniality and Charity’s cooking had brought it a good deal of
custom in the early days.

But a marked change took place in Eben’s fortunes when the
Devally-Hipson plant, a mammoth concern that manufactured airplanes, was
established in Bromville. A host of workmen and officials came in the
wake of the plant and the quiet little town became a center of bustling
activity. What had been good enough for it in the early days was good
enough no longer. New hotels, equipped with all modern facilities,
sprang up almost over night, and the homely, comfortable Bromville House
was thrown into the shade.

The hardest blow of all came when the great Hotel Excelsior was built.
This was a magnificent hotel, up to the minute in all its appointments
and with a splendid golf course attached that drew tournament players
from all parts of the country.

Against the proprietor of this hotel Eben had a special grievance. Eben
had owned the ground on which the building and golf links and had sold
it to Brewster Gale for what he regarded as a fair price. But, apart
from the few hundred dollars paid to bind the bargain, Eben did not
receive the rest of the purchase price. Gale was utterly unscrupulous
and by the aid of legal technicalities and cunning lawyers he so
maneuvered that poor Eben was frozen out entirely.

Ted, as he grew older, did all he could to help his foster parents. He
worked about the place, painting, repairing, running errands. Then, when
he was old enough, he got a position in the airplane factory and was so
diligent, so clever, so ingenious, that he rapidly rose from one
position to another until he was earning good wages, all of which he
turned over to the old folks.

The making of airplanes fascinated him. He loved the work and everything
pertaining to it. But he was not satisfied merely with making planes. He
wanted to fly them. The one consuming, burning ambition of his life was
to be an aviator. At every flying meet he was an absorbed and fascinated
spectator. But what chance did he have to realize his longing! To go to
a flying school would cost him more dollars than he had cents. Besides
the expense, his foster parents would be without his wages all the time
he was learning.

But fate sent Walter Hapworth to the plant one morning. He was a wealthy
young business man and an expert at golf. At the moment he was in
Bromville to take part in a golf tournament on the Hotel Excelsior
course. He had had most thrills that sport could give and he thought to
get a new one by taking up flying. He dropped over to the Devally-Hipson
works to look over the planes and Ted was assigned to show him around.
Ted answered so readily all questions that were asked, showed such an
astonishing grasp of every detail that Hapworth was strongly attracted
toward him.

Learning the boy’s ambition to become an airman, Hapworth offered to
bear all his expenses for going to a flying school and enough, also, to
cover the wages he would otherwise lose. Ted was delighted and accepted
the money as a loan, which he afterward paid back.

At the flying school Ted soon became a star. He was a born airman, and
his skill, his courage, his coolness rapidly developed him into one of
the most expert of flyers. On leaving the school he secured a position
in the Air Mail Service. His route was between Chicago and St. Louis and
he soon became the most daring and valued aviator in the whole division.

At about that time the whole country was agog with interest over a prize
of twenty-five thousand dollars that had been offered for the first
successful airplane flight over the Atlantic from New York to Paris, a
feat that up to that time had never been accomplished. Some of the most
famous airmen of America had entered for the contest, and discussion was
rife as to which of these would win the prize.

Ted had been deeply stirred by the offer and would have given the world
to be able to compete. But he had no money to speak of, and it would
require perhaps fifteen thousand dollars to procure a plane and provide
for other necessary expenses. So he put the matter regretfully aside as
impossible.

But here again Walter Hapworth came to his help. He learned of Ted’s
desire and offered to back him. Ted accepted and hurried off to San
Francisco to supervise the building and testing of the plane destined
for the ocean journey.

Then one day Ted Scott jumped into his plane on the Pacific coast, shot
like a bullet over the Sierras and the Rockies and landed at one jump in
St. Louis in the fastest time that had ever been made by a man traveling
alone in a plane.

When, scarcely waiting to take breath, he made New York in a second
jump, the field was black with the crowds that had gathered to greet
this young Lochinvar. He had become famous in a night and America rang
with his name.

A few days were spent on the field tuning up the plane, getting fuel and
supplies and making the last preparations for the momentous trip. Then
one misty morning Ted Scott lifted his plane into the skies and turned
its nose toward the yeasty surges of the Atlantic.

What perils he faced and conquered on that hazardous trip, how he winged
his way through fog and sleet and gale, how with high heart and
dauntless courage he faced dangers that would have appalled the stoutest
heart, how he hit the Irish coast, skimmed across great Britain, over
the English Channel and swooped down like a lone eagle on Paris, winning
the prize and setting the world aflame, is told in the first volume of
this series, entitled: “Over the Ocean to Paris.”

Ted woke the next day to find himself famous. No event for a generation
had so stirred the imagination of the world. America went wild over him.
Europe heaped him with honors. And when he came back to the hearts of
his own people he received one of the greatest ovations recorded in
history.

Soon after his return a terrible Mississippi flood took place. Ted
enlisted in the aviation section of the Red Cross and his untiring work
in the devastated districts added more laurels to those he already wore.
Later on he rejoined the Air Mail Service in the Rocky Mountain
Division, its most dangerous section, and had many thrilling adventures
amid the peaks and gorges.

A prize was offered for the fastest flight over the Pacific from the
Pacific Coast to Hawaii, which Ted Scott won after encountering great
perils on his flight. These perils were matched a little while later
when he headed a rescue expedition over the West Indies in search of
missing flyers who had gone on a hunt for hidden pearls. Again, in
Mexico, he came in contact with bandits, and at one time came so close
to death that the noose was tightening about his neck.

But adventure was the very breath of life to the young aviator and he
found plenty of it when he brought to justice a band of mail robbers in
the Western wilds. There was no lack of adventure either when he made an
overseas flight from America to Australia and incidentally found that he
was carrying a madman in his plane.

In the course of these exploits he solved certain personal problems. He
vindicated the memory of his dead father, who had been falsely accused
of a crime and had died before his innocence was made manifest. He also
unearthed facts that proved Brewster Gale’s rascality and restored to
Eben Browning the money of which he had been defrauded.

The activity and audacity of a diamond smuggling ring operating over the
Canadian border enabled Ted to do a signal service to his country in
capturing the criminals. Shortly afterwards he was on a journey to the
coast when he was caught in a blizzard, rendered unconscious and would
have frozen to death, if it had not been for the courage of a young
girl, Grace Larue.

Ted was intensely grateful to his young deliverer and he soon had an
opportunity to prove his gratitude. The father of Grace, a noted
explorer, Hamilton Larue, had been lost with his party in the jungles of
Brazil. Ted organized an expedition and set out by plane in search of
the missing ones.

What dangers he encountered in those fearful jungles, dangers from
snakes, jaguars, and other terrors of the wild; the battles he had with
cannibals and headhunters; the thrilling climax when he rescued the
explorers from the tower in which they had been held prisoners; all is
narrated in the preceding volume of this series, entitled: “Over the
Jungle Trails.”

Now to return to Ted Scott as with desperate energy he makes his way up
the huge tree near the burning house, the screams of the frantic woman
ringing in his ears.

He reached the first bough and swung himself up into the body of the
tree. Then he mounted higher until he stood on the heavy bough that
extended almost to the side of the house and a little beneath the window
at which the woman stood.

As he advanced, holding to the bough above to steady himself, he could
see through the window that the door at the back was already a glowing
ember that threatened at any moment to collapse and let in the devouring
flames.

Once that door was down, the flames, caught by the draught from the open
window, would envelop the woman at once.

She sensed that danger and her screams were heart rending.

“They’ll get me! They’ll get me!” she shrieked. “I must jump! I’d rather
be crushed than burned to death.”

“No! No! Don’t jump!” commanded Ted. “I’ll be with you now in another
second.”

He got within two feet of the window. He could go no further.

He planted his feet firmly on the bough and with one hand held with a
death grip the branch above. Then he extended his right arm in a sort of
semi-circle.

“Jump!” he commanded. “I’ll catch you.”

She covered her face with trembling hands.

“Oh, I can’t!” she wailed. “You’ll let me drop. You can’t hold me!”

“Jump, I tell you!” shouted Ted. “It’s your only chance.”

Still she hesitated.

The door went down. The flames rushed in. The woman jumped!