The Airplane Boys among the Clouds or, Young Aviators in a Wreck

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

TRYING OUT THE NEW BIPLANE

"I tell you, Elephant, it's the Bird boys, and nobody else!"

"But they had a monoplane last summer, Larry; and you can see for yourself it's a biplane out yonder over the lake. So that's why I thought it must be Percy Carberry and his crony, Sandy Hollingshead."

"Shucks! stir up your think-box, Elephant. Get a move on your mind, and look back. Don't you remember Percy lost his old biplane when he took that trip down to South America, and had some trouble with the revolutionists in Colombia?"

"Say, now, that's right. You mean the time Andy Bird found his long-lost father, whose balloon left him a prisoner in such a queer way? Yes, but tell me, where would Frank and Andy Bird get a biplane now?"

"Oh! rats, what ails you, Elephant? Didn't they make the other; and don't you know they've been busy all winter, in that shop Old Colonel Whympers fitted up for them out in the field? And not even such bully good friends as you and me were allowed to take a peep inside. That's what they were working on—building this new biplane, after sending for the parts."

"Don't it just shine like fun in the sunlight, though?" declared the little "runt," who had been nicknamed "Elephant" by his chums, possibly in a spirit of boyish humor, and which name had clung to him ever since.

"It sure does look like a spider-like craft," Larry Geohegan went on. "Just see that white-headed eagle up in the blue sky. I bet you he's looking down, and wondering what sort of thing it is."

"Huh! don't you fool yourself there, Larry," chuckled the other. "That wise old chap knows all about aeroplanes. He's had experience, he has. You forget that last summer, when the race was on between the Bird boys and Percy, to see who could land on the summit of Old Thunder-Top first, from an aeroplane, those same eagles had a nest up there, and tackled the boys for a warm session."

The two lads had come to a halt on the road about half a mile from the borders of Bloomsbury where they lived. From where they stood, holding their fishing rods, and quite a decent catch of finny prizes, they could look out over the beautiful surface of Lake Sunrise, which was over fifteen miles long, and in places as much as three or four wide.

"Mebbe you can tell me, Larry," the smaller boy presently said, "just why Frank keeps sailing around over the lake that way? Suppose he's taking pictures from his biplane?"

"That might be, Elephant," Larry answered, slowly and thoughtfully. "Seems to me I did hear somebody talking about the State wanting to get a map of the lake, with all its many coves and points. But ain't it more dangerous for aviators hanging over water than the shore?"

"That depends," remarked the other boy, whose real name was Fennimore Cooper Small, and who was rather apt to have an exalted idea of his own importance, as do so many undersized people. "If a fellow dropped out of his machine when he was even fifty feet high, he'd be apt to break his neck, or anyhow a leg, if he struck on the land; but in the water he might have a show."

"Look at 'em circling round and round, would you?" Larry went on, his curiosity climbing toward the fever stage....