The flying chance

The commandant of the Philadelphia navy-yard looked up from the sheaf of papers which bore the superscription of the Bureau of Naval Affairs, Washington, at the young man who stood at attention before his desk.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rankin,” he said simply.

The brown, alert face showed no surprise. Ensign Rankin belonged to those men who cannot afford to be easily shaken from their balance, but his passionate argument was already on his lips.

“But why?” he cried. “Why? I passed in everything else. My sense of balance was perfect. My nerve reactions were A No. 1. My blood pressure, hearing, everything! Only those paltry two points I fell short in.”

Official dignity relaxed just a trifle before the bitterness of the young man’s disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” the commandant said again. “But this flying business is dangerous enough as it is without our adding to it by overlooking the slightest imperfection in the human machine. The service requires a full twenty in eyesight, and your test measures up only eighteen. Therefore you have been judged ‘unfit for aviation.’”

The hundred and sixty pounds of hard, lean athlete stiffened yet further with the fighting spirit.

“Then, with your permission, sir, I shall appeal for a waiver. Because I’ve flown all kinds of machines long before I ever got this commission.”

The commandant’s eyes were steely.

“It will do you no good to appeal to Washington for a waiver, Mr. Rankin. There have been a few cases, I admit--a very few, like Williams and Steffanson--but only after the men concerned have proved themselves to be expert beyond all question in spite of their physical shortcomings.

“These orders are final. You have already been transferred to line duty, and you will report to Lieutenant-Commander Evans for further instructions.”

Even the rawest and scrappiest ensign could make no mistake about that tone. Rankin sensed vaguely that the authority of the whole United States stood behind that incisive, unruffled voice.

He went, and reported.

“Ha, Rankin,” Lieutenant-Commander Evans greeted him. “I’ve already received orders about you. I’m sure we shall be pleased to have you with us. If you will call for me at the mess some time this afternoon I’ll take you on board and introduce you in the ward-room.”

Rankin murmured a conventional thanks. But he meant not a word of it. His mind was full of the injustice of his case. He was not interested in line duties; he had come into the service for aviation.

“I guess there’s nothing you can do till then,” Evans continued. “Only don’t get lost. Stick around the yard somewhere; because we’re under orders to hold ourselves in readiness to put out at a moment’s notice, and all leave has been cut short.”

“Very well, sir.”

“All right. See you around three o’clock then.”

Rankin’s was a war commission. That is to say, his rating in the naval militia had been accepted at its face value by the navy. He was therefore a full-blown ensign, just the same as any Annapolis graduate, much to the indignation of those same graduates, who had spent many toilsome years in qualifying for the same rank.

Militia commissions were always looked upon with disfavor by the Annapolis men. Rankin, for instance, had put in just two months with the naval militia of his State, and had been elected to a commission by his fellows on account of his happy popularity and his superior experience in flying.

The sacred traditions of the service, therefore, meant nothing to him. Stern discipline and unquestioning obedience were vague unpleasantnesses, half understood, and in theory only. To “stick around the yard,” then, for the rest of the day with nothing to do didn’t have any sense in it; furthermore, there was a girl who lived in West Philadelphia--and there was loads of time before three o’clock.

II.

Within the hour Rankin was ringing that familiar bell on the other side of the river. The girl kept him waiting, to stride nervously up and down the veranda. A wry grin twisted his firm, straight lips. She hadn’t forgotten that little difference, then, and her ultimatum.

When she finally came out, after fully five minutes’ delay, Rankin knew at once from the hard, set look about her usually dimpled mouth, and the steadiness of her gray eyes, that she had been schooling her determination, and that she still considered the barrier to exist. He knew well enough what it was, too, and his first rueful words were meant to remove it.

“Well, Eileen, I’m out of it at last.”

“Out of what?” There was a half hope and a hint of willing surrender in her eager question.

“Out of aviation--for keeps.”

“Oh, Jack! Did you really? I--I never thought--” The joyous exclamation stammered down to a more diffident, almost apologetic statement with a rising color. “I never really thought you’d ever give up so much, just for me.”

Now there was a whole lot of plain human in Jack Rankin. He didn’t ordinarily lie without necessity; but here was a sudden, irresistible temptation positively thrust at him to steal at least a little credit out of a situation which held nothing but the bitterest disappointment for him. His hesitation was just for a fraction of a second, and then he prevaricated by inference.

Nor was he overskilful about it. He was just wise enough to hold his peace and to squeeze her outstretched hand with a world of meaning. Her surrender was instant and complete. With radiant eyes in which there was just a hint of tears, she led him to the comfortable hammock, plethoric with pillows, which swung in the veranda breeze.

“I know it’s an awfully big thing to have asked you, Jack,” she comforted him with the half regretful confidence of a big-hearted girl who has just forced a sacrifice from her lover. “But you understand now how I felt about it, don’t you, dear? I just couldn’t marry you as long as you stayed in that horrible business.

“I could never sleep without seeing that awful grand stand and that field where poor Bob-- Oh, I can’t bear to think about it. And with Jim sticking to it yet; he’s so obstinate. One in the family is bad enough. I just couldn’t bear it, Jack.”

Rankin just patted the round curve of her shoulder and still said nothing. Bob was one of the many who had paid the toll to the greatest of all games; Jim was the other brother. Rankin understood how the girl felt, and the scrupulous conscience which besets every decent young man when he is in love smote him.

Almost he confessed. But when a beautiful, tearful girl jumps to a conclusion and makes a self-sacrificing hero out of one, how shall a man who is ordinarily human disillusion her? Jack Rankin stifled the still, small voice and postponed the telling to a vague, more propitious future. Sufficient to the day the evil thereof. He would have trouble enough explaining his absence from the navy-yard, should his commanding officer by any chance look for him before his return. In the mean while, there were matters of infinitely greater importance.

Given a beautiful girl, a hammock, and the impending prospect of an indefinite separation, three o’clock in the afternoon arrives all too soon. When Ensign Rankin came to the officers’ mess, hurrying to make up for lost time, and trying to carry off an air of innocence as if he had been looking for his chief for quite a while, a couple of juniors looked furtively at him.

His guilty conscience was quick to catch the glance, and he knew that his nemesis had overtaken him. But of the full virulence of its malice he had no inkling as yet.

“Seen anything of my skipper?” he asked with an assumption of ease.

“No,” said one of them shortly.

“Not for hours and hours,” added the other with equally ominous brevity.

“Hours and hours?”