On October 18, as Wilbur wrote to Katharine, “a storm hove to view” that made “the prayers of Elijah look small in comparison.
The wind suddenly whirled around to the north and increased to something like 40 miles an hour and was accompanied by a regular cloudburst. In this country the winds usually blow from the north, then from the east, next the south, and then from the west, and on to the north again. But when the wind begins to “back up,” that is, veer from south to east and north, etc., then look out, for it means a cyclone is coming. . . . Maybe it got so in love with backing up that it went forward a little sometimes just to have the fun of “backing up” again. It repeated this process seven times in four days. . . .
The second day opened with the gale still continuing. . . . The climax came about 4 o’clock when the wind reached 75 miles an hour. Suddenly a corner of our tar-paper roof gave way under the pressure and we saw that if the trouble were not stopped the whole roof would probably go.
Orville put on Wilbur’s heavy overcoat, grabbed a ladder, and went out to see what could be done. Wilbur, coatless, followed after and, fighting the wind, found Orville at the north end of the building, having succeeded in climbing the ladder only to have the wind blow the coat over his head.
As the hammer and nails were in his pocket and up over his head [Wilbur continued, delighting in telling the story for those at home once the storm had passed], he was unable to get his hands on them or to pull his coattails down, so he was compelled to descend again. The next time he put the nails in his mouth and took the hammer in his hand and I followed him up the ladder hanging on to his coattails. He swatted around a good little while trying to get a few nails in. . . . He explained afterward that the wind kept blowing the hammer around so that three licks out of four [he] hit the roof or his fingers instead of the nail. Finally the job was done and we rushed for cover.
The driving wind and rain continued through the night, Wilbur wrote, “but we took the advice of the Oberlin coach, ‘Cheer up, boys, there is no hope.’ ”
By mail, on October 18, came a newspaper clipping sent by their Hawthorn Street neighbor George Feight reporting the failure of another Langley test flight on October 7, and this time it was the full-sized Great Aerodrome with Charles Manly at what constituted the controls. No sooner had the “buzzard” with a wingspan of 48 feet been launched than it dove straight into the water. Manly, though thoroughly drenched, suffered no injury.
“I see that Langley has had his fling, and failed,” Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute. “It seems to be our turn to throw now, and I wonder what our luck will be.”
In the same letter, Wilbur left no doubt that their confidence was at a new high. “We are expecting the most interesting results of any of our seasons of experiment, and are sure that, barring exasperating little accidents or some mishaps, we will have done something before we break camp.”
Scratching off a postcard to Charlie Taylor, Orville expressed the same spirit in a lighter vein.
Flying machine market has been very unsteady the past two days. Opened yesterday morning at about 208 (100% means even chance of success) but by noon had dropped to 110. These fluctuations would have produced a panic, I think, in Wall Street, but in this quiet place it only put us to thinking and figuring a little.
They proceeded on the Flyer much as if they were building a truss bridge, only with the attention to detail of watchmakers, Orville keeping a day-by-day record in his diary.
Thursday, October 22 We worked all day on lower surface and tail.
Friday, October 23 Worked on skids during morning, and after dinner finished putting on hinges.
Saturday, October 24 We put in the uprights between surfaces and trussed the center section. Had much trouble with wires.
On Monday the 26th, they worked again on the truss wires until the afternoon, when the wind veered to the north, and they spent two hours at Kill Devil Hills flying the glider and succeeded in breaking their previous record for time five times and covering distances of as much as 500 feet.
George Spratt had rejoined them, and on October 27 he and Dan Tate started up the engine on the machine.
Monday, November 2 Began work of placing engine on machine. . . .
Wednesday, November 4 Have machine now within half day of completion.
But when the next day they started up the motor, the magneto—a small generator utilizing magnets—failed to deliver a spark to ignite the gas and the vibrations of the misfiring engine tore loose and badly twisted the propeller shafts.
With little chance of more flight tests anytime soon, George Spratt chose to go home, taking with him the damaged shafts as far as Norfolk to be shipped back to Charlie Taylor in Dayton.
Two days later Octave Chanute appeared. The weather turned miserably cold and rainy, and there was little to do but sit around the stoves and talk. Chanute told the brothers it was as if they were “pursued by a blind fate” from which they were unable to escape.
“He doesn’t seem to think our machines are so much superior as the manner in which we handle them,” Orville wrote to Katharine and their father after Chanute had left. “We are of just the reverse opinion.”
Days passed still too cold to work. Puddles about the camp turned to ice. All the same, the brothers were entirely comfortable and had no trouble keeping warm, as Wilbur wrote reassuringly in another letter home, cheerful as ever and off on another of his wry renditions of coping with the travails of camp life.
In addition to the classifications of last year, to wit, 1, 2, 3 and 4 blanket nights, we now have 5 blanket nights, and 5 blankets and 2 quilts. Next come 5 blankets, 2 quilts and fire; then 5, 2, fire, & hot-water jug. This is as far as we’ve got so far. Next comes the addition of sleeping without undressing, then shoes & hats, and finally overcoats. We intend to be comfortable while we are here.
In the last days of November, snow fell, something they had not seen before on the Outer Banks. Water in their washbasin froze solid. Cold or not, they succeeded meantime in getting the engine to run with practically no vibration even at high speed. The Flyer would be launched on a single wooden track, to serve like a railroad track 60 feet in length on which it would slide. The total cost for materials for this innovation was all of $4.
By all evidence the brothers had suffered in spirit not in the least. “After a loaf of 15 days, we are down to work again,” Orville wrote to Charlie on November 23. “We will not be ready for a trial for several days yet on account of having decided on some changes in the machine. Unless something breaks in the meantime we feel confident in success.”