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There were two rude shed-hangars in which they kept the three imported Blériots a single-seat racer of the latest type, a Blériot XII. passenger-carrying machine with the seat under the plane, and "P'tite Marie," the school machine, which they usually kept throttled down to four hundred or five hundred, but in which Carmeau made such spirited flights as the one Carl had first witnessed.
At four or five Carmeau would crawl out, scratch his beard, start a motor, and set every neighborhood dog howling. The students would gloomily clump over to the lunch-wagon for a ham-and-egg breakfast. The first flights began at dawn, if the day was clear.
For days he merely flew with the instructor, till he was himself managing the controls. At last, his first flight by himself. He had been ordered to try a flight three times about the aerodrome at a height of sixty feet, and to land carefully, without pancaking "and be sure, Monsieur, be veree sure you do not cut off too high from the ground," said Carmeau.
He was the best teacher I could have had, patient and wise. I can't write about him. And I can't get this insane question out of my mind: Was his beard burned? I remember just how it looked, and think of that when all the time I ought to remember how clever and darn decent he was. Carmeau will never show me new stunts again.
The New York Chronicle in company with papers along line gives prize of $40,000. Ought to help bank account if win, in spite of big expenses to undergo. Now have $30,000 stowed away, and have sent mother $3,000. To fly against my good old teacher M. Carmeau, and Tony Bean, Walter MacMonnies, M. Beaufort the Frenchman, Tad Warren, Billy Witzer, Chick Bannard, Aaron Solomons and other good men.
He was less compactly easy than Lieutenant Haviland, but he took better to overalls and sleeping in hangars and mucking in grease he whistled ragtime while Forrest Haviland hummed MacDowell. Carl's earliest flights were in the school machine, "P'tite Marie," behind Carmeau, the instructor.
Lieutenant Haviland was detailed to the army flying-camp. Parting with Haviland and kindly Hank Odell, with Carmeau and anxiously polite Tony Bean, was as wistful as the last night of senior year.
On an impulse he wrote of his wondrous happiness to Gertie Cowles, but he tore up the letter. Then proudly he wrote to his father that the lost boy had found himself. For the first time in all his desultory writing of home-letters he did not feel impelled to defend himself. Crude were the surroundings where Carmeau turned out some of the best monoplane pilots America will ever see.
Was this really his first ascent by himself? What were his sensations? How had his motor stopped? Was it true he was a mining engineer, a wealthy motorist? Hank Odell, the shy, eagle-nosed Yankee, running up as jerkily as a cow in a plowed field, silently patted Carl on the shoulder and began to examine the fractured landing-wheel. At last the instructor, M. Carmeau.
Carl had awaited M. Carmeau's praise as the crown of his long flight. But Carmeau pulled his beard, opened his mouth once or twice, then shrieked: "What the davil you t'ink you are? A millionaire that we build machines for you to smash them? I tole you to fly t'ree time around you fly to Algiers an' back you t'ink you are another Farman brother you are a damn fool!
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