“It was in this flight over the mountains and desert that liquefied hydrogen was used for inflation purposes, probably for the first time. Although the big balloon used at this time was left in the mountains it was rescued later by a second expedition organized in the same year. At this time young Napier and Hope encountered one of their most marvelous adventures. While they were attempting to ascend from one of the mesas of Navajo land, their balloon was caught in an aerial maelstrom, swept westward to the Pacific Ocean and finally wrecked on a water-logged derelict lumber vessel. On this, within ten days, the young aeronauts turned aviators by constructing an aeroplane out of the remnants of the car of their dirigible balloon.”
Buck had what proofs he could find of his story and stood waiting but the managing editor leaned a little further toward his desk light and continued to read.
“Escaping from the abandoned wreck, the improvised aeroplane made a three hundred mile flight to land and came down in the highlands of Mexico where the daring aviators added further flavor to their novel experiences by rescuing a blind man, long a prisoner among an unknown tribe of Mexican Indians, and preventing his immolation as a human sacrifice on the summit of a prehistoric pyramid.”
The absorbed editor paused and, without lowering the slip he was reading, glanced at Buck over the top of his glasses.
“Are you familiar with the story of how these boys made an aeroplane on a wrecked vessel in the Pacific?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” responded Stewart. “It has been told in the newspapers. There are several books about it and other adventures of these young men.”
“I wish,” continued the editor, “if you know the titles of them, that you would step into some book shop to-morrow and have all of them sent to me.” Then he resumed his reading.
“In the summer of the following year the Airship Boys, including young Russell, the reporter, sailed from San Francisco on a novel Arctic trip. One of the backers of this expedition was Major Honeywell and another was J. W. Osborne, of Boston, a millionaire manufacturer interested in copper mines in North British America. For traveling over the ice a dirigible balloon was carried along. The car of this was a practical aeroplane and ice yacht. This little-heralded dash to the north is said to have reached to within a few miles of the pole. The return was made by way of northern British America where the aeroplane part of the aeronautic outfit was used to discover a marvelous copper mine on an uncharted island in Coronation Gulf.