On a Torn-Away World Part 4

And he marched away to the flying machine and got aboard with the coop and b.u.t.tsy in his arms.

The professor had found the last of his possessions he wished to take with him. He followed the negro aboard. The _s...o...b..rd_ was already outside the hangar and on its wheels, ready for the start. This time they dispensed with the professor's catapult, for it would be necessary to have the trucks attached to the aeroplane to enable her to start properly from any point on which they might land. The workshop and plant in general were left in charge of a watchman and caretaker, and only this man was present when Jack took his place in the controller's seat and Mark started the powerful motor and clambered aboard.

The craft ran across the field, at first slowly and then more rapidly as Jack increased the speed. The flying machine began to lift almost immediately.

"Hurrah!" shouted the irrepressible Jack. "We're off!"

"About nor-norwest is the course, Jack," cried Mark Sampson, likewise inspired by the flight of the _s...o...b..rd_.

As for Washington White, he gazed down to the dusky earth below them and his eyes rolled.

"Gollyation!" he muttered. "If b.u.t.tsy should fall down dere, he'd suah jounce himself some; wouldn't he?"

CHAPTER IV

"WHO GOES THERE?"

With the moonlight lying like a benediction over the fields and forests of Maine, the _s...o...b..rd_, her motor humming like a huge b.u.mble-bee, and her propellers and controls working in perfect order, swept on her course into the northwest. The lights of Easton, ten miles from their home, melted into the earth-shadow behind the sky-voyagers within the first hour of the sure-to-be eventful journey.

Jack Darrow did not force the pace of the flying machine. They had a long and trying flight before them. The machine as a whole had been tried out only two or three times during the few days that had elapsed since she was completed and this present expedition had been planned.

These short flights had served merely to put the parts in good working trim; but the lad knew better than to make the pace that of top-speed from the start.

He wanted her to "warm up." He knew that the _s...o...b..rd_ could make one hundred twenty-five miles an hour. But such speed was likely to shake something loose and cripple the mechanism.

A flight of seventy or eighty miles an hour would bring them well into Canada by noon of the next day. They would have to there descend at, or near, some town, and report themselves and the nature of their flight to the authorities. This was to be done as a precaution in case they had a breakdown somewhere in crossing British possessions. A pa.s.sport would then aid them if they were obliged to call upon the authorities in the heart of Canada for aid.

But at present none of these things bothered the party much. Sudds and the professor slept as though they were in their beds at home. The old hunter could sleep anywhere, and awake instantly with all his faculties about him. And the scientist slept profoundly because his body was exhausted.

Under the brilliant moon the _s...o...b..rd_ swung along the air-way like a veritable bird. Jack increased the revolutions of the propellers a trifle and the ship responded like a spirited horse to the spur. She darted ahead at a ninety mile speed and Washington White emitted a mournful groan.

"What's the matter with you now, Wash?" shouted Mark, for they all wore ear-tabs and had to shout to make one another hear.

"Oh, lawsy-ma.s.sy on us!" groaned Wash. "I'se got sech a misery, Ma.s.sa Mark, I dunno but ma time has camed."

"What time has come?" demanded Mark, without much sympathy. "It'll be time for you to hustle and get us something to eat before long."

"For de goodness gracious Agnes' sake!" gasped the negro, "yo' suahly ain't a-gwine ter dribe me ter wo'k up in disher flyin' contraption?

Dat would suah be cruelty ter animiles, boy--it suah would!"

"We've got to eat, Wash," said Jack, chuckling, "and you are steward and cook of this craft."

"Gollyation! did I ship fo' sech wo'k? I nebber knowed it. It does seem to me dat de consanguinity ob de 'casion done call fo' notting but de quietest kind o' verisimilitude. De qualmishness dat arises in de interiorness of ma diaphragm ev'ry time I circ.u.mnavigates erbout in disher flyin' ship makes me wanter express mahself in de mos'

scatterin' kin' ob er way--I hopes you gits ma meanin' clear?"

Jack was laughing so that he could not speak, but Mark managed to say:

"You mean that the motion of the aeroplane gives you a feeling of _mal de mer_?"

"Dat's wot I done said," Wash replied, seriously. "I nebber in ma life felt so mal-der-merry as I do at dis present onauspicious 'casion; an'

if dat mal don't stop merryin' purty quick, I suah shall be--ugh!--sick ter ma stummick!"

This wail fairly convulsed Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson; but they knew that if Wash paid more attention to his duties and thought less about his own situation he would be better off. Mark insisted on his going at once into the tiny, covered "galley," as the boys called it, hung amidships, in which were the means of heating water, making coffee, and cooking certain simple viands in their stores.

Wash went to his duties grumblingly; but he was an ingenious and skillful cook and when he got to work he forgot his "feeling of mal-de-merry."

It was now approaching midnight and the flying machine had been steadily traveling northward for some hours. Both Andy Sudds and the professor awoke and offered to relieve the boys in their work. But Mark had taken Jack's place in the controller's seat and neither he nor his chum felt that he wished to give over the guidance of the _s...o...b..rd_ to anybody else.

Now, some distance ahead, the peak of Mt. Katahdin, gloriously mantled in moonlight, rose before them. Their direct course lay over the summit of this eminence, and Mark decided that it would be better to rise to a higher strata and cross the mountain than to swing around it.

Therefore Mark raised the bow of the flying machine and she darted upward on a long slant, drawing ever nearer to the shining peak of the great mountain. The night air was chill--it had been cool when they left the earth--and as they rose to the rarer ether it was evident that they would find a degree of temperature far lower than the usual summer heat.

Mark kept the _s...o...b..rd_ scaling swiftly upward, mile after mile; but the long tangent at which he had started to clear the summit of Katahdin did not prove sufficient, and by and by they found themselves within a very few yards of the rocky side of the peak.

Out of a dark glen a spark of light suddenly shot--almost like a rocket in swiftness. Jack saw it first and cried:

"See that! What is it? What do you make of it?"

"A shootin' star, I declare!" said Andy Sudds.

"Nothing of the kind," exclaimed Jack, quickly. "A star could not shoot up from the earth."

"Wot's dat says somebody's a-shootin' at us?" gasped Washington White.

"If dey punctuates our tire, we'll suah go down wid a big ker-smash!"

The professor, however, watched the "shooting star" for some moments without speaking, and then rapidly made his way to Mark's side.

"Send your 'plane up in spirals, boy!" he commanded. "Don't let that light rise over us. Be quick, now!"

"What is it, Professor?" asked young Sampson, as he obeyed the scientist's injunction.

"I am sure it is a light in the bow of another airship--but what manner of ship she is, or who drives her, I cannot guess," declared Professor Henderson, gravely.

"Another airship!" cried Jack, who overheard him. "What do you know about that?"

Mark handled the _s...o...b..rd_ with great skill, and the powerful craft mounted much more swiftly than the distant spark of light. The spiral course the 'plane now followed carried it at times much farther from the mountain side than it had been when first the strange light was noticed.

That light followed the _s...o...b..rd_ up and up in similar spirals, and the boys were soon convinced that Professor Henderson's discovery was a fact. The lamp was in the bow of another air craft.

"But why should we keep over them?" asked Jack. "There is no danger; is there?"

"We do not know who they are," said the professor, shortly. "The craft came right out of a fastness in the mountain-side--a place difficult to reach, and which would not seem to attract aviators of the ordinary cla.s.s." "I know what he is thinking of," cried Mark, suddenly. "I read in the paper that the Department of Justice officers are after some big smugglers and that it is believed the criminals, in going back and forth into Canada, use some kind of an aerial craft. Isn't that so, Professor Henderson?"

"I had the fact in mind. The flying machine is being put already to uses that are not commendable, to say the least. The Maine and Canadian border has for years been used by bands of smugglers, and if one of these gangs have purchased and can use a flying craft, they may make the revenue men a deal of trouble."

"You're right, sir. And I read likewise that the government officers proposed using an aeroplane themselves to track the smugglers. Perhaps the villains, if that is their ship below us, may take us for secret service men."

As he spoke the lamp so far below them darted up at a sudden and sharp angle, there sounded the sharp crack of some weapon, and Washington White jumped and screamed.