one o'clock
He was not only to give the signal to start off the flyers , but with Mr. Giddings , was to await in Panama their return , and demand from each crew upon arrival a document containing the signature of the port official at each scheduled landing . Colonel Hess , looking at his watch , now raised his hand , and instinctively those in the front of each of the long lines of spectators flanking the run-way crowded back so that the airplanes would not strike them as they dashed down the field for the take-off . Tom Meeks and Chuck Crossman spun the propellers , sprang back to escape their vicious whirr as the respective engines fired , and quickly clambered into their machines . It was exactly one o'clock . Both airplanes taxied down the runway side by side . They also arose together , amid a great cheering , some ninety feet apart , shooting grandly up into the air above the heads of the people in the lower end of the field . At a height of a thousand feet , the gray _ Clarion _ bent eastward .