Excerpt
FLYING.
“What’s that below, Hal?”
The speaker was Chester Crawford, an American lad of some 16 years.
Hal Paine allowed his eyes to turn from the steering wheel and glanced over the side of the flying aëroplane.
“I don’t see anything,” he replied, after a careful scrutiny below.
“Neither do I, now,” said Chester, straining his eyes.
At this moment the third occupant of the machine made his presence known.
“Woof! Woof!” he exclaimed.
The third speaker was Marquis, a dog.
“Woof! Woof!” he barked again.
Hal, with a quick move, slackened the speed of the aëroplane, and let it glide gently closer to the earth.
“Must be something wrong,” he confided to Chester, “or Marquis wouldn’t be barking like that.”
Both lads peered into the darkness that engulfed them on all sides. As far as the eye could penetrate there was nothing but blackness, solid, intense.
“Let’s go a little lower, Hal,” whispered Chester.
Under Hal’s firm hand the aëroplane came down gently, until at last it was soaring close to the treetops. And now, suddenly, both lads made out the cause of Marquis’s uneasiness.
Beneath them were thousands upon thousands of armed men. To the north, to the south, and to the east and west the dense mass of humanity stretched out. Hal and Chester, flying close to the earth, at last could make out moving forms below them.
Suddenly it became light. Not broad daylight, but the darkness gave way enough for the lads to distinguish what lay below them. The dawn of another day was breaking.
At the same instant that the lads made out the huge mass of humanity upon the ground their presence in the air was discovered. There came the sound of a single shot and the whiz of a bullet, as it sped close to Hal’s ear.
With a quick movement the lad sent the plane soaring high in the air once more. So sudden was the movement that Chester, caught unprepared, lost his balance, and saved himself from tumbling to the ground only by clutching the side of the machine. Marquis also had a narrow escape from being thrown out. He let out a loud yelp of fear, as he was thrown violently against Chester. The lad threw out a hand and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, just as it seemed he would plunge to certain destruction.
“Say!” he called to Hal, when he finally regained his breath and his head. “What’s the matter with you? You almost dumped us both out.”
“Did I?” replied Hal briefly. “Well, as long as you didn’t fall it’s all right. We had to come up suddenly, or the chances were we would have gone down suddenly. But it’s my fault. I should have given you warning. Are you hurt?”
“No,” replied Chester.
“I’ll be careful next time,” said Hal. “You’ll have to forgive me this once.”
“Say no more about it,” answered Chester. “But what was the cause of this sudden rise?”
“Cause!” repeated Hal in astonishment. “You don’t mean to tell me you don’t know the cause? Didn’t you hear that shot?”
“Yes, I heard it....