Hal accepted Mrs. Balfour’s invitation to luncheon, and Jerry hastened away to eat at a restaurant. But, his weakness getting the better of him, the colored boy reached the schooner at three o’clock, foodless and moneyless, glad enough to stay himself with a hunk of Captain Joe’s bread and a piece of cold fish. While he ate this, the Three Sisters, with a supply of gasoline, a big box of fresh fruit presented by Mrs. Balfour, and the baggage of the aviators, was throwing the spray on her return trip out of the bay.

Bob and Tom, after the Anclote left the river and settled into an even glide, did not relax. It was impossible for either boy to enjoy his first real dash in an airship, and each, hardly breathing, sat tense and with hands gripped. At each small rise, drop or slightest dart, the hearts of the two boys seemed to stop. Then, with each steadier glide, there would come the sighs of breathing anew. For perhaps five minutes neither boy spoke.
 
The aeroplane was perhaps two hundred feet in the air, and almost over the white shell road leading from Tampa to Tarpon Springs. As the highway, like a dirty white ribbon, flew to the rear, both boys sat with eyes fixed straight ahead. A little settlement popped into the air, rushed toward the speeding machine with a buzz of calls and yells, and disappeared behind. It seemed to give Bob new courage.

“How fast?” he asked, in a nervous voice and between his set teeth.

“Twenty-five miles,” gasped Tom, with a quick glance at the anemometer. “Hadn’t you better—?” But the sentence was not finished. Reaching ahead, to throw the forward rudder up for a still higher flight, preliminary to putting on more speed, Bob’s straining ear had caught the lessened beat that denoted a dead cylinder. He acted on impulse, and swiftly. As the forward rudder came to a level and the guiding planes in the rear shifted to stay the upward flight and bring the machine over the roadway to the left, Bob’s left hand shut off the engine.

Tom asked no questions, but he knew something had happened. The aeroplane, hurtling along under its own momentum, settled swiftly[191] toward the earth. Up went the forward rudders again, and the quick descent was checked.

Then, released once more, the semi-buoyant machine fell on another slant, and, the cold perspiration of intense excitement on both boys’ faces, the landing wheels struck squarely on the smooth road—ran forward swiftly in lessening bounds until, with a clamp of his foot on the spoon brake, Bob brought the car to a full stop.

Tom’s hands were so tensely gripped about the section uprights that he could scarcely release them. Bob’s knees were shaking.

“Wha—what’s the matter?” mumbled Tom.

“A cylinder stopped,” answered Bob in the tone he might have used to say one of his parents had died.

“Can you—you fix it?”

Bob was already partly recovered. But there was no color in his face.

“I reckon so,” he answered, none too confidently. “I’ve fixed them on automobiles.”

“Were you scared?” asked Tom, as he unbent his limbs.

“Do you want me to tell the truth?” answered his companion, trying to laugh. “Well, when I first got on that seat, I didn’t have cold feet. They were frozen.”
 
Tom laughed feebly, and shook his head.

“I didn’t weaken till we hit the water.”

“I was over the worst of it as soon as we got goin’,” went on Bob. “But talk about jumpin’ into a cold bath! For awhile, I wished we’d never thought of the thing.”

“How about it now?” went on Tom.

“Now? Oh, it’s all over now. I’ve been baptized. You feel all right, don’t you?”

“I’ve felt better—in a sail boat,” laughed Tom, “but I’m game. Fix her up. We’re losin’ time.”

The trouble was only a loose wire and a deficient spark. It was adjusted in a moment. Bob looked at his watch.

“Five minutes after two,” he said, “and I suppose we’re about twenty miles from the island. All aboard for Anclote—due there at two thirty-four.”

The hard roadway gave the Anclote an easier start than the softer ground in the factory yard. With hardly a wobble, the aeroplane took to the air again. Fragrant fruit orchards and picturesque stretches of hummock land rolled along beneath the flying car. Before half past two, thickening dwellings indicated a new town, and, with the white-topped breakers of[193] the distant ocean in sight to the west, the swiftly flying machine passed over the city of Tarpon Springs. Instantly, Bob brought the airship on a new course to the west and pointed for the red flash light on Greater Anclote.

When the lighthouse fell beneath the young aviators, there was another turn to the north. The blue waters of the gulf on the left and the gray-brown shimmer of the shoals between the keys and the distant beach on the right were ample guarantees of happy vacation days at hand.

“There she is,” exclaimed Tom, at last, as Mac’s flag came suddenly into sight. At the extreme northern end of the group, Captain Joe’s selection had been reached. With a long, curving sweep to the right, Bob dropped lower and lower over the water, and, at two forty-five P. M., the aeroplane entered into a little bay, shaped its course parallel with the flat, hard beach and sank on its landing wheels as if alighting on a mattress.

When Bob drew his benumbed limbs from the landed car, he threw himself flat on the warm beach and closed his eyes with a tired but happy smile.
 
“Well, we did it, Tom,” he said slowly. “Are you satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” repeated Tom. “Wait till I get my chance—I’ll show you.”

“You can try any time you like,” laughed Bob. “The machine belongs to all of us. I’ve had my fling. You can take Hal up and show him the way to do it, and then he can take Mac.”

“How about Jerry Blossom?” said Tom grinning.

“I’ll attend to Jerry. Leave him to me,” answered Bob. “But when every one has had his turn, you and I will make the real flight. We’ll try to see just what the deepest recesses of the big swamp are like.”

“You mean the hidden home of the last of the Seminoles?” suggested Tom eagerly.

“Sure,” exclaimed Bob. “If white men can’t get there by swimmin’ or by boat or on foot, it’s our duty to go. You know, Tom, I think you’re cut out for a writer—a sort of literary fellow—if you tried. Your mother showed me the stories you’ve written. And if we really find those old Indians............