Andy had fallen into the habit of strolling up the sandy road each evening about the time for the Lake Worth Express to go south. But not once did he catch the sound of the warning whistle or the grinding brakes. Even the Friday night train went by without slackening speed, and the boy was almost ready to abandon hope that Roy Osborne might come to his rescue.

“The automobile races were ended this afternoon,” said Andy when he returned to the house after a vain visit to the box-car depot Friday evening. “If he don’t come to-morrow evening, I’ll give up.”

Although neither Andy nor Captain Anderson talked much about the new aeroplane this evening, the machine being practically complete, they could not resist making it the subject of some comment.

“It don’t look very strong to me,” remarked[122] Mrs. Anderson. “Where do you hitch on the wings?”

In explaining that the wings were the two planes, Andy grew verbose and was soon expatiating, for the first time, on the magnificent possibilities of the apparatus.

“Then you let it up with a rope,” suggested Mrs. Anderson, upon whom, to tell the truth, a good part of Andy’s technical talk was wasted.

Both Andy and Captain Anderson laughed.

“I wish we could,” exclaimed the captain, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to sail it without a rope. It works just like a boat—but in the air,” he explained.

“But who guides it?” persisted his wife.

“Who? Why, there must be an operator. I supposed you knew that—”

“I knew that much about it,” interrupted Mrs. Leighton, with a half patronizing smile. “I’ve just been waiting for Andrew to offer to do it.”

There was an awkward silence. The captain puckered his lips, and Andy grew white about the mouth. Someone had to say something.

“And what if I did?” said the boy, at last, his fingers gripped and his breath partly suppressed.

[123]

“Have you been counting on doing this?” asked his mother, sitting upright and leaning toward the distressed boy.

“N—no,” stammered Andy. “But there is no one else.”

Mrs. Leighton turned toward Captain Anderson:

“Do you want him to do this, Captain?” she asked, her voice indicating that this situation had been long anticipated.

“No,” exclaimed the captain. “I don’t want him to do it. Of course, it is more than dangerous.”

“You know you said you’d find someone,” continued Mrs. Leighton, who was visibly under a strain.

“I haven’t found anyone yet,” replied the captain, somewhat crestfallen.

Mrs. Leighton was silent a few moments.

“Captain,” she said at last, “whenever, in your judgment, Andrew can be of further use to you in this experiment, he may do as you wish. If you think he ought to attempt to operate this aeroplane, I feel that I must defer to your judgment—”

The captain was on his feet in an instant, shaking his head.

[124]

“We should have thought of all this before we began and saved all our trouble and expense,” he exclaimed. “It’s too late to mend that, but it isn’t too late to prevent the boy breaking his neck. I don’t recommend that he turn aviator—I don’t even believe I’ll consent to it.”

Any hope that Andy had that his mother might approve of his undertaking to operate the car, was dead. The boy arose and left the room. He choked back a sob and wiped away a few tears that he could not suppress, and then walked far out on the pier and sat in the moonlight alone and sadder than he had ever been in his life.

When he finally entered the boathouse to go to bed, he found Captain Anderson already asleep. The boy wondered if his friend and co-worker did not feel something of the same disappointment. In the morning Andy was awakened by a noise in the shop, and he turned over to find Captain Anderson opening the big double doors.

“Turn out, youngster, and give me a hand. I want to get the car out so I can fasten on the rudder.”

“I suppose you’re goin’ to take a photograph[125] of it,” said Andy, with a sad smile, “and then knock her to pieces. It would make a fine rack to dry clothes on—”

“I’m goin’ to test her out if it’s the last thing I do alive,” said the captain in a determined voice.

“You?” exclaimed Andy, rolling out of bed. “You? Not if I can stop you, you won’t. You’re sure to kill yourself.”

“What about you?” replied his companion.

“Oh, I—well, that’s different. I always wanted to. And you’re doin’ it just because—because you’re mad.”

“Never mind why I’m doing it,” went on the captain. “You get dressed and get busy.”

Without daring to make further protests, the boy complied. At the earliest moment, however, he went into the house and almost immediately Mrs. Anderson appeared with a skillet in her hand. Rushing down the path to the boathouse, she cried:

“Charles Anderson, you’ll do no such thing.”

Her husband, already bolting on the bird-tail rudder frame, looked up in surprise.

“Do you mean to tell me you think you’re goin’ sailin’ off in the sky in that thing?”

[126]

“I haven’t told you anything of the sort,” answered the captain somewhat meekly.

“Well, are you?”

“I—I—”

“You are not! That’s all there is to that. It’s bad enough to come down here and live half the year doing nothing and seeing nothing while you fritter away your time building boats you don’t want, and nobody wants, I guess. But you mark what I say, I ain’t goin’ to go mopin’ around in black the rest o’ my life pretending you weren’t crazy when you committed suicide. And if you don’t tell me this minute you’ll stay down on the ground, I’ll smash every stick in this fool killer.”

“I—I—” began the captain again.

As he hesitated, his irate wife sprang forward with her skillet in the air. The fragile varnished spruce stanchions were at her mercy.

“I promise,” capitulated her husband. “I won’t try it.”

“Then you come right in to breakfast,” exclaimed Mrs. Anderson. “And if you want my advice, you’ll put a match to that whole ............