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 quietly, “I got hold of that man Mullens that works for Swain’s, the motor people.  He worked in an aeroplane factory in France once, he says, for nearly a year.  He does not know much about the actual planes themselves, but he knows a lot about the Gnome engine.  He says he has invented an aeroplane engine that will lick them all when he gets it right.  He is not hard to get going, but he won’t stay on the point much.  I have been at him half a dozen times altogether, but I wanted to get a few things quite clear in my head before I told you fellows.”

The big airdrome that was to be placed on the Frisbie property gradually took a sort of being, though everything about it seemed to progress with maddening deliberation.  Ground was broken for the buildings.  Timber and lumber were delayed by Far Western strikes, but finally put in an appearance.  A spur of railway line shot out to the site of the new flying grounds.  Then barracks and huge hangars—–­the latter to house the flying machines—–­began to take form.