after daybreak,
May 6th. There remained only the task of filling their hulls with one
thousand eight hundred gallons of gasolene.

Early in the morning of May 5th, while mechanics were pumping gasolene
into the tanks of the NC-1, a spark from an electric pump fell into a
pool of gasolene and set fire to her whole right side. In a moment the
heavily "doped" linen wings, with seasoned spruce spars, were a mass
of hot flame. The sailors at work on the machine, with complete
disregard of their personal safety, ran for fire-extinguishers, and
with the fire burning around the mouth of the open tanks, confined it
to the right wings of the machine and to the elevators of the NC-4
standing close by. No one believed that the NC-1 could be made ready
in time for the flight twenty-four hours away.

She was ready the next morning, with fresh wings from the discarded
NC-2, but the flight was postponed on account of a heavy northeast
wind, reported all the way to Halifax. The machines made their start
from Rockaway on the morning of May 8th, at ten o'clock, and two of
them, the NC-1, with Lieutenant-Commander Bellinger, and the NC-3,
with Commander Towers, arrived at Halifax after nine hours' flying.
The NC-4 proved to be the "lame duck" on the first leg of the flight,
and came down at sea a hundred miles off Chatham, because of
overheated bearings. Some alarm was felt during the night by the
failure of destroyers to find her. She appeared the next morning off
the Chatham breakwater, "taxi-ing" under her own power.

While her sister ships, the NC-1 and the NC-3, were flying to
Trepassey the NC-4 waited at Chatham. Even after the repairs were
made, it seemed impossible for the NC-4 to catch up with the other
two machines, and she was held stormbound for five days. On May 14th
she finally got away from Chatham, and, with her new engines, made the
fastest time over the short course to Halifax recorded since the
beginning of the flight. Her average for the 320 miles was 85 nautical
miles an hour, about 20 miles an hour faster time than either of the
other two machines had made.

Four days later she left Halifax for Trepassey in a last-minute effort
to catch her sister planes. It seemed certain that she could not get
there in time and would be forced to follow on the course a day later.
Just as she flew into Trepassey Bay, on May 14th, the NC-1 and NC-3
were preparing to take-off. They postponed their start until the next
day. In the