The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship Part 6

Suddenly he spied a small brook at the foot of the hill. Ill and dazed as he felt Roy sprinted toward it, and wetting his handkerchief hastened back to Jess. Kneeling by her side he bathed her forehead. He was rewarded in a few moments by beholding her eyelids flutter and open. In a few seconds more she was fully conscious, but weak and shaken. Roy collected the scattered cushions from the wreck, and placing them like a mattress laid the girl upon them.

She thanked him with a wan smile and then lay still once more. Roy wisely did not speak. He judged that perfect quiet was what she wanted at that moment.

While he sat by her side meditating what to do a sudden noise caused him to look upward.

It was a noise like the drone of a giant b.u.mble bee. It came from directly above his head.

"The Golden b.u.t.terfly!" shouted Roy, springing to his feet.

Above him, at an elevation of some thousand feet, the yellow wings of the Prescott aeroplane were outlined against the blue, like the form of one of her namesakes.

Roy shouted and waved frantically. Presently he was rewarded by the flutter of a handkerchief from the cha.s.sis of the 'plane. At the same instant it was swung about, and revolving in graceful circles began to spiral down to the earth.

"Hooray! It's Peggy and Jimsy!" cried Roy. "I recollect now Jess told me that Jimsy was to have a lesson to-day."

Ten minutes later the aeroplane lighted in the field not a hundred yards from the wreck. As it reached the ground Peggy started the engine at reduced speed. The aerial marvel began to scoot across the field toward Roy as obediently as if it had been an automobile under perfect control.

Agitated as he was Roy could not help feeling enthusiastic as the huge, glittering, flying thing came closer, its engine roaring and its propeller whirring angrily, and yet, the dainty girl in the motor bonnet who was driving it had it under perfect control every second. Throwing back a lever and cutting off the spark and the gasolene, Peggy brought the aeroplane to a stop with a jerk.

Jimsy, with alarmed questions on his lips, sprang out, while Roy helped his sister to alight.

"Good gracious, whatever has happened?" gasped the girl, as she stood on the ground and viewed the still form of her chum Jess, over which Jimsy was bending in genuine alarm.

"It's all right, sis," Roy a.s.sured her, "Jess is not badly hurt. See--she is looking up at you."

Peggy sped lightly over the turf to her chum's side.

"Oh, Peggy, dear, I'm so glad you've come. It was dreadful. But Roy was so brave. I'm sure I owe my life to him, for the last thing I recollect we were heading direct for the train."

She would have said more, but Peggy held up an admonitory finger. Turning to Roy she sought an explanation of all that occurred. It was soon told, and then the question of summoning a physician came up.

In the midst of the discussion Peggy gave a glad little cry.

"The aeroplane! I can fly over to Doctor Mays' house. There's a dandy big pasture in the rear in which to alight."

"By George, that's so," agreed Roy, "and I guess, although it sounds a bit startling, it's the only thing to do. We can't run the car and n.o.body will be along here for hours perhaps. This road isn't travelled much."

But Peggy, with that quick decision which was characteristic of her, was already half way to the aeroplane. A moment more and she was in the cha.s.sis, and slipping into the driver's seat began adjusting the motor.

"I'll leave you to look after Jess," said Roy to Jimsy, "while I go along with Peggy. I'm not sure that she is as expert in managing an aeroplane as she thinks she is."

"Well, she brought me over here at a great rate, anyhow," put in Jimsy, loyally.

"And in the nick of time, too," said Roy, warmly pressing the other's hand.

"Oh, do be back as quickly as possible, my foot hurts dreadfully," moaned poor Jess, "and my head feels as if a thousand dwarfs were hammering away inside it."

"We'll be back before you expect us," Roy said, cheerily. Jimsy shouted something, but his words were drowned in the roar of the motor as Roy clambered into the Golden b.u.t.terfly and Peggy started the engine.

The aeroplane dashed forward over the smooth turf and then seemed to take the air as lightly and easily as a bit of gossamer. Straight up it soared, high above the tree tops, and was speedily reduced to a fast diminishing speck in the northwest in which direction lay Doctor Mays'

home. Looking downward from the speeding flyer the boy and girl aviators could see, spread out below them like a checkerboard, the fertile Long Island landscape.

Through it ran the railroad, looking like a glittering ribbon of steel.

Off to the north the sea sparkled, a few white sails dotting its surface.

The Black Rock lighthouse, painted in bands of red and white, formed a conspicuous object.

All at once, on the road beneath them, Roy spied a solitary motor-cyclist whom, even at the height to which they had now risen, he recognized as Fanning Harding. He called his sister's attention to the rider.

"He must have pa.s.sed right by where the accident happened," he remarked; "that road has no outlet for some distance. Funny that he didn't come to help us."

"You must remember that the banks and hedge hid the place from the road,"

Peggy reminded him. "Even Fanning Harding wouldn't have willfully pa.s.sed by you when you were in such straits."

"I don't think so, either," agreed Roy, "and come to think of it, bending over his handlebars as he is, he would not be likely to have noticed the gap we ploughed through."

"Look," cried Peggy suddenly, "he's stopping."

The girl was right. The motor-cycling boy, whose pace had hitherto been as fast as that of the aeroplane, could now be seen to slacken his machine and finally stop it. Leaning it against a fence he clambered into an adjoining field, and with every evidence of extreme caution he crept toward a patch of woods at no great distance.

"What can he be doing?" exclaimed Peggy.

As she spoke they saw the boy below them take something from his hip pocket.

"A pistol!" cried Roy.

The next instant Fanning Harding had vanished into the patch of woods without having noticed the aerial observers, or, at least, so it appeared.

CHAPTER VI.

A ROADSIDE MYSTERY.

"Now, what could he be up to?" Roy wondered as they sped on.

"Give it up," laughed Peggy, "unless he was going rabbit shooting."

"Rabbit shooting with a pistol--and in June--oh, Peggy, I thought you were more of a sport than that."

"Well, can you suggest any solution?"

"Frankly--no. But I've been forgetting something which the sight of Fanning Harding reminded me of," and Roy at once plunged into an account of his interview with the banker and his son.

To his great relief Peggy agreed with him that on no account must the aeroplane be turned over to the Hardings, but her mind was sadly troubled, nevertheless, by what her brother told her concerning Simon Harding's att.i.tude.

"It looks as if he was bent on hounding us," she sighed.