The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps | Page 4

monthlies
generally contain something on flying."
"My father can get us some good stuff," suggested Dicky Mann. Mr.
Mann, senior, was the proprietor of the biggest store in the town; and
while he did not exactly pretend to be a universal provider, he could
produce most commodities if asked to do so. The store had a fairly
extensive book and magazine department, so Dicky's offer to enlist the
sympathies of his father promised to be of real use.
"I'll write to my brother Bill and get him to fire something over to us
from France," said Harry Corwin. "There is no telling but what he can
put us on to some wrinkles that the people who write things for the
papers would never hear about."
"My aunt just wrote me a letter asking me what sort of a book I wanted
for my birthday," put in Fat Benson. "I will write to-day and tell her I
want a book that will teach me to fly."
This raised a storm of laughter, for Henry Benson's stout figure bid fair
to develop still further along lines of considerable girth, and the very
thought of Fat flying was highly humorous to his mates.
The little group broke up hurriedly as Bob looked at his watch and saw
how time was slipping away.
"Back to the grind, fellows!" he cried. "We'll have another talk-fest
later on."
That random conversation was one day to bear splendid fruit. The seeds
had been sown which were to blossom into the keenest interest in the
real, serious work of the mastery of the air. Live, sterling young fellows
were in the Brighton Academy. Some of them had declared allegiance
to the army, some to the navy, but now here was a stouthearted bunch

of boys that had decided they would give themselves to the study of
aeronautics, and lose no time about it.
The seven spent a thoughtful afternoon. It was hard indeed for any one
of them to focus attention on his lessons. The newness of the idea had
to wear off first. After class hours they met again and went off by
themselves to a quiet spot on the cool, shady campus. Seated in a circle
on the grass, they talked long and earnestly of ways and means for
commencing their study of air-machines and airmen systematically.
"This," said Jimmy Hill with a sigh of pure satisfaction, "is team-work.
My father said this morning that team-work counts most in this war. If
our team-work is good we will get on all right."
Team-work it certainly proved to be. It was astonishing, as the days
passed, how much of interest one or another of the seven could find
that had to do with the subject of flying. They took one other boy into
their counsels. Louis Deschamps was asked to join them and did so
with alacrity, it seemed to lend an air of realism to their scheme to have
the French boy in their number.
Dicky Mann's father had taken almost as great an interest in the idea as
had Dicky himself, and Mr. Mann's contributions were of the utmost
value.
Days and weeks passed, as school-days and school-weeks will.
Looking back, we wonder sometimes how some of those interims of
our waiting time were bridged. The routine work of study and play had
to be gone through with in spite of the preoccupation attendant on the
art of flying, as studied from prosaic print. It was a wonder, in fact, that
the little group from the boys of the Brighton Academy did not tire of
the researches in books and periodicals. They learned much. Many of
the articles were mere repetitions of something they had read before.
Some of them were obviously written without a scrap of technical
knowledge of the subject, and a few were absolutely misleading or so
overdrawn as to be worthless. The boys gradually came to judge these
on their merits, which was in itself a big step forward.

The individual characteristics of the boys themselves began to show.
Three of them were of a real mechanical bent. Jimmy Hill, Joe Little
and Louis Deschamps were in a class by themselves when it came to
the details of aeroplane engines. Joe Little led them all. One night he
gave the boys an explanation of the relation of weight to horsepower in
the internal-combustion engine. It was above the heads of some of his
listeners. Fat Benson admitted as much in so many words.
"Where did you get all that, anyway?" asked Fat in open dismay.
"It's beyond me," admitted Dicky Mann.
"Who has been talking to you about internal combustion, anyway?"
queried Bob Haines, whose technical knowledge was of no high order,
but who hated to confess he was fogged.
"Well," said Joe