CHAPTER THREE of The Ark of the Covenant The Merlin THE cluster of buildings close to Gardiner Bay, where we did our construction and experimenting, was beginning to find definition on the white margin of the sea, when there dropped from the clouds in front and above the Sieve a beautiful silver shape. It was the Merlin which Milliken had out for a trial flight. Until that moment I had never seen her in the air. She was my design and had been built in the sheds on the beach under my supervision. Her tests had all been carried out at my hands, and she had never been in the air without me. Milliken had often handled her, but always with myself at his elbow. Until now he had not taken her up on a solo spin. To see her so, as an outsider would, was a queer experience for me. I felt pretty much as a dramatist might if he saw a play of his acted for the first time. I wish I could write down just what that moment meant to me, but I can't. The clean look of the Merlin gave me a thrill. I wanted to fly her myself and be able, at the same time, to watch her from a distance. It was something of a surprise to me to see her up in the hands of Milliken, though I couldn't say that he had exceeded his privilege. It was quite a natural thing for him to do, considering the way I trusted him. But even while I was admitting that he handled her splendidly, a sort of jealousy had hold of me for a minute or two. He passed me, and I signaled half angrily that I would land first. The graceful silver shape swept dizzily over my bows, turned banking into a sideways loop round me, and righted again to come about after the clumsy oldSieve like a great, slim-winged bird. No, I'm wrong. There isn't a bird that could repeat the manoeuvre, and I had thought, until I saw Milliken do it, that only the Merlin and myself had the knack, but the mechanic had copied my stunt. Stupidly annoyed, I planed down for the shore and flattened out to taxi up to the jetty. The mechanics ran out and brought the old seaplane to rest in the shed, and I disembarked to watch Milliken bring in the Merlin. She came down perfectly in the hovering flight that had been designed into her, and landed on the water so like some great seagull that the expectation was she would next fold her wings. It was gracefully done and by the time Millikenstepped ashore my jealousy and irritation were swept from me by a feeling of gratitude. "What's she like, Milliken?" I asked. "Oh, sir! Oh, sir!" he cried, ablaze with delight. "She's a dream! There's nothing to touch her on sea or land--and we made her, sir--we made her!" Now Milliken, as a rule, is prone neither to call other men "sir," nor to wax enthusiastic, and his excitement surprised me. "You handled her well," I said casually. "You've got the hang of that side loop all right." "Oh, that!" said Milliken. "Why, do you know, a baby could handle her. She's a credit to you, Mr. Boon--it's all in the design." This from Milliken was by way of an amende honorable. When I first introduced him to the design of the Merlin, and showed him the wing modifications that were meant to achieve the steep hovering which now distinguished her, he had thought the notion impossible. The idea had evolved from stalling, and he then had the old fixed idea that the only safe way of landing was to plane down on a thin angle and flatten. The idea of perfecting a continuous stalling, in which the machine got into neither tail nor nose dive, nor even into a spin, but simply floated to earth as a feather might, seemed mad to him. The principle is now a commonplace in aeronautics, and how Milliken and I arrived at it, very nearly at the cost of our lives, has little to do with the story I have to tell. I mention Milliken's apology to give just what sidelight it may on the man's character, for he wants some explaining. If I know anything about Milliken, he will never bother to read these pages, even if he is told he comes into them--Shakespeare and real belles lettres are more in his way than this sort of production--so I may say what I like about him. In any case, I won't say anything that I wouldn't tell him to his own ugly old face if the need arose. I have never met a man with as great a passion so carefully hidden as Milliken and his love for air machines, nor anybody with half his practical experience and skill. He has the strongest hands and the gentlest. No fractious nut is too firmly fixed for his spanner, and no adjustment too delicate for his fingers, and I am open to bet that he has never stripped a screw in his life. He looks about as broad as he is long--which, since he is little over five feet in height, is perhaps not saying such a lot--and with the most equitable of tempers the habitual expression of his face is one of untamed ferocity. If Milliken had wanted to, he could have cleared the workshops in quick time, and I have seen him rise under three big men, during a rag, and carry them off like so many feather pillows. Like most good men of their hands, he can control his fists. I take it he knows too well the power in them and behind them to use them unworthily. Milliken is the sort of mechanic who always has about him a lump of cotton waste, and as we inspected the Merlin that day--I suppose for about the thousandth time--he was rubbing the frosted aluminum of the fuselage and of the shuttered wings, or was polishing up the glass of the portholes. It was as if he could not get his darling clean enough, for he fussed about the machine like a mother over a spoiled child. I am not going to say that the Merlin did not deserve all his affection. From the gleaming 1,000 h.p. radial engine, weighing just about half as many kilograms, to her rudder, and from wing-tip to wing-tip, she was all frosted aluminum, save only for a thin line of gentian blue that ran along her sides to spread out and cover her rear plane. Through the portholes and windows of the control cabin, a glimpse could be had of the sparrow's-egg blue that decorated her interior, of the shining nickel of the dials and controls. She looked the littlest thing. Yet at a pinch she could carry a dozen and a half fighting men. She seemed the most innocent and peaceable of machines, but her speed and her power of rapid manoeuvre made her just about the deadliest thing that ever took the air. We could take off the whole top of the cabin above the blue line and fit a fighting top, and round the inside of the fusilage were set stanchions for sixguns. Two of these guns, the fore and aft, were belt-guns firing half-kiloshells, the forward one synchronized with and firing between the propeller blades. Beneath were hatches for bomb-dropping and torpedo release. Of course, at the moment I'm writing of, when Milliken and I were standing byher on the jetty, all the fighting kit of the Merlin was unshipped. I had every permit from the government, but as the law forbade any private machine to carry armament and I did not want any inspectors dodging around until she was quite ready, her fighting capacity still remained secret. I was putting off the time when I would have to say she was perfect and would have to offer the design to the U. S. government, so she remained a peaceable machine ostensibly built for pleasure, and her fighting kit lay oiled and ready in the strong-room of the workshops. The Bird Flies AS I watched Milliken dance round his pet, I began to have an absurd feeling of guilt about taking her away. The mechanic was sure to be aggrieved, and I wondered how I was going to break the news to him. He stepped back and gazed at the machine with a rapt expression. "Don't you think," he said slowly, "that the band round her could be widened, Mr. Boon? I don't mean much, Ju-u-st a morsel. Ju-u-st about a sixteenth of an inch either side, to show up her lines prettier ?" "I had a notion of widening the band considerably," said I solemnly, to string him a bit, "about four inches altogether. Then I thought of bringing the blue right round the engine boss, and stenciling a wreath of emerald-green leaves round her nose, bringing the design right round with the band. Then perhaps a row of vermilion dots either side of the blue strip would brighten her up--" He was gazing at me with his jaw dropped. "Huh!" he said contemptuously. "Why don't you finish her off like a circus wagon and be done with it? Want to make her look like a swing-boat at a fair---?" He broke off and grinned. "You got me that time," he admitted. "Looks like it," said I. "You and your 'ju-u-st a morsel !' Come up to the office, Milliken. I want to talk to you." When I had finished telling him of the robbery and of my plans, he put a hand on each knee and scowled at me fiercely. "Do you mean to tell me you're giving up your work here to go crook-hunting?" he demanded. "You've said it," I replied. "I've got to stand by the old man in the best way I can, Milliken. He's up against a big thing." He thought for a minute. "Well," he said slowly. "I don't know that I blame you. Your father's worth all you can do. But turning the Merlin into a private limousine--huh!" "I have to give him the best I've got, don't you see?" "Why don't you recondition the J. V. B. 7?" he asked. "She's quite a good bus yet, up to about three hundred kilometres per, and more of a passenger machine than the Merlin--plenty quick enough for your dad's purpose, I'd say. It'd be a shame to use the Merlin. You don't want everybody down at Battery Park swarming over the old girl, do you?" "Wouldn't do them much good if they did," said...
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