The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship Part 7

"It surely does," agreed Roy, "but look, sis--there's Doctor Mays' house off there. You'll have to make a landing in that field back of the barn."

Peggy nodded and deftly touched a lever or two. The aeroplane began to descend.

"Want me to take the helm?" inquired Roy.

If Peggy had dared to turn her head she would have flashed an indignant glance at her brother. As it was she had to content herself with a very haughty, "No, indeed."

Roy laughed.

"You surely are the original Girl Aviator," he exclaimed.

"Huh!" cried Peggy, "by no means the original one, my dear. There are lots of them in Europe and there soon will be in this country, too."

"I hope so," responded Roy, "riding with a pretty girl in an aeroplane just suits me."

But Peggy did not reply, and for a good reason. They were now just above the pasture lot in which she meant to descend, and below them, as they dropped, an amusing scene was transpiring.

The Doctor's horse, old Dobbin, was dashing madly around in circles, faster than he had gone in twenty years of solid respectability; the two cows, and an old mother pig with her family, joined him as the strange whirring thing from the sky dropped lowering above them. As for the chickens, they flew wildly in every direction, clucking as if they had gone mad.

In the midst of the turmoil a rear door opened and a kindly-faced old man with white whiskers and a pair of big spectacles perched on his nose, emerged, to see what could be causing all the disturbance. He fairly dropped the big book he was holding, in his astonishment as he beheld a glistening object, like a huge yellow and spangled bird, dropping in his very back yard, so to speak. But the next instant he recovered himself.

"Bless my soul," exclaimed Dr. Mays, for it was the retired physician himself, "I thought for a moment that the fabled days of the gigantic Roc, with which Sinbad the sailor had his adventures, had returned.

"It must be those Prescott children. Ah!" he exclaimed, as the aeroplane alighted and came to a standstill, "it is! Dear me, what a century we are living in! Boys and girls flying about like--like--my chickens!"

He "clucked" rea.s.suringly to the terrified birds as he hastened toward the now stationary machine. Roy and his sister came forward to greet the venerable old doctor as he approached.

Roy hastily explained their errand, being interrupted constantly by the physician's exclamations of astonishment.

"Go back with you? Of course, I will, my children. Will one of you help me catch old Dobbin and harness him? My man Jake is in town to-day."

"Oh, doctor," cried Peggy, entreatingly, "can't we persuade you to go back with us in the Golden b.u.t.terfly?"

"To fly! Good heavens!"

The aged physician threw up his hands at the idea.

"It is perfectly safe, sir," put in Roy. "Safer than old Dobbin in his present frame of mind, I should imagine."

They all had to laugh as they looked at the hitherto staid and sober equine careening about the pasture with his tail held high, and from time to time emitting shrill whinnies of terror at the sight of the strange thing which had landed in his domain.

"I don't know, I really don't," hesitated Dr. Mays. "The very idea of an old man like me riding in an aeroplane. It's--it's----"

"Just splendid," laughed Peggy, merrily, "and, doctor, I've often heard you say to father that it was a physician's duty to keep pace with modern invention."

"Quite right! Quite right! I often told your poor father so," cried Dr.

Mays. "Well, my dear, it may be revolutionary and unbecoming to a man of my years, but I actually believe I will brave a new element in that flying machine of yours. More especially as we can reach my young patient much quicker in that way."

While Dr. Mays, who was a widower and childless, went to hunt up an old cap, as headgear for his novel journey, Roy obtained permission to use the doctor's telephone. He called up Jess's home and related briefly to Mrs. Bancroft what had occurred, and asked that an automobile be sent to the scene of the accident.

Mrs. Bancroft, who at first had been seriously alarmed, was rea.s.sured by Roy's quiet manner of breaking the news to her, and promised to come over herself at once. By this time Doctor Mays was ready, and the young people noted, not without amus.e.m.e.nt, that under his a.s.sumed air of confidence the benevolent old gentleman was not a little worried at the idea of braving what was to him a new element.

The Golden b.u.t.terfly was equipped with a small extension seat at the stern of her cha.s.sis, and into this Roy dropped after it had been pulled out. Dr. Mays was seated in the centre, as being the heaviest of the party, while Peggy resumed her place at the steering and driving apparatus.

"All ready behind?" she called out, laughingly, as they settled down.

"All right here, my dear," responded the doctor with an inward conviction that all was wrong.

"Go ahead, sis," cried Roy. "Hold tight, doctor, to those straps on the side."

With a roar and a whirring thunder of its exhausts the motor was started up. Dr. Mays paled, but, as Roy afterward expressed it, "he was dead game." Forward shot the aeroplane across the hitherto peaceful pasture lot which was now turned into a crazy circus of terrified animals.

"Wh-wh-when are we going up?"

The doctor asked the question rather jerkily as the aeroplane sped over the uneven ground, jolting, and jouncing tremendously despite its chilled-steel spiral springs.

"In a moment," explained Roy; "the extra weight makes her slower in rising than usual."

"Look out, child!" yelled the doctor, suddenly, "you'll crash into the fence."

He half rose, but Roy pulled him back.

"It's all right, doctor," he said rea.s.suringly.

But to the physician it seemed far otherwise. The fence he had alluded to, a tall, five-barred, white-washed affair, loomed right up in front of them. It seemed as if the aeroplane, scudding over the ground like a scared jackrabbit, must crash into it.

But no such thing happened.

As the 'plane neared the obstruction something seemed to impel it upward.

Peggy pulled a lever and twisted a valve, and the motor, beating like a fevered pulse, answered with an angry roar.

The Golden b.u.t.terfly rose gracefully, just grazing the fence top, like a jumping horse. But, unlike the latter, it did not come down upon the other side. Instead, it soared upward in a steady gradient.

The doctor, his first alarm over, gazed about him with wonder, and perhaps a bit of awe. Many times had he and his dead friend, Mr.

Prescott, talked over aerial possibilities, and he had always listened with interest to what the inventor had to say. But that he should actually be riding in such a marvellous craft seemed like a dream to this venerable man of science.

After his first feeling of alarm had worn off the physician found that riding in an aeroplane after the preliminary run with its b.u.mps and jouncings is over, is very like drifting gently over the fleeciest of clouds in a gossamer car, if such a thing can be imagined. In other words, the Golden b.u.t.terfly seemed not to be moving fast, but to be floating in the crystal clear atmosphere. But a glance over the edge of the high-sided cha.s.sis soon showed the physician that she was tearing along at a great rate at a height of about five hundred feet. Fields, woods, streams and small farmhouses swam by beneath their keel.

"Well, doctor, how do you like it?" Roy ventured, after a few moments.

"Like it!" repeated the physician; "my lad, it's--it's--it's bully!"

And thus did his dignity fall like a mantle from Doctor Mays after a few moments in Peggy Prescott's, the girl aviator's, Golden b.u.t.terfly.

A few moments later they came in sight of the field in which they had left poor Jess lying by the side of the wrecked automobile.

Hardly had they alighted before Jimsy, a rather worried look on his face, was at the side of the aeroplane.

"Say, Roy," he exclaimed, "you didn't happen to put that jewel case in your pocket for safe keeping after the accident, did you?"