"WHO GOES THERE?"
With the moonlight lying like a benediction over the fields and forests
of Maine, the _Snowbird_, her motor humming like a huge bumble-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 _Snowbird_ 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
passport 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 _Snowbird_ 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-massy on us!" groaned Wash. "I'se got sech a misery, Massa
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 circumnavigates 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 _Snowbird_ 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 _Snowbird_ 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 _Snowbird_ 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 _Snowbird_ 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
class." "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.
"Gollyation!" he bawled. "Dem fellers is suah tryin' ter punctuate us!"
Through the blackness of the night a distant voice hailed the pilot
of the _Snowbird_.
"Ahoy! ahoy! Who goes there?" was the cry, and it was repeated twice.