Andy read the note, re-read it, walked to the edge of the gallery and looked up and down the wide river. His face was pale. Then he consulted his watch. It was fifteen minutes after twelve o’clock.

“Ah reckon dey all gib yo’ de go by,” said Ba, with a laugh.

Instead of replying, Andy turned and entered the house. On the kitchen table was his luncheon. Evidently this was not in the boy’s mind at that moment. In the living room, he went to the chart-rack and took down the map of the Bahama Islands.

Spreading it out on the table, he weighted the ends, and sat for a few moments, his eyes fixed upon it and his chin in his hands. Then with a pencil and a bit of cardboard for a ruler, he drew lines at right angles through the mouth of Goat Creek and the westernmost end of the Grand Bahama Banks. Following the horizontal lines to the nearest degrees marked on the chart, he had the latitude of[158] each point. The same operation with the vertical lines gave him the longitude.

These degrees, minutes, and seconds, he wrote down in his memorandum book in this form:
Goat Creek     North Lat.     27° 57\' 30"     — W. Long.     80° 37\' 30"
Grand Banks     North Lat.     26° 45\'     — W. Long.     78° 54\'
        ————         ————
        1° 12\' 30"         1° 43\' 30"

The subtraction showed him the difference between the two points in degrees of latitude and longitude. Andy had no tables to show him the exact number of geographic miles in a degree of latitude or longitude in that part of the world. But, with the knowledge that a degree of either was practically seventy miles at the equator, he computed the number at fifty miles.

The boy was fresh enough in his mathematics to know that the hypotenuse of a rectangle eighty-six miles by sixty-one miles would be approximately—not allowing for the curvature of the earth—one hundred miles. And this he set down as the distance between Captain Anderson’s dock and the nearest Bahama land.

There was no time wasted in speculation on[159] this point. Andy had evidently come to a decision, and he was working directly to a specific end. With the chart yet before him, he went to the mantel, where, close beside the captain’s binoculars, always rested a small compass. Squaring the chart sheet with the north and south line of the compass, Andy laid the compass directly over the mouth of Goat Creek. Then he extended his bit of cardboard from the center of the compass to the tip of the Bahama Bank.

The edge of the card cut the compass along the S.E. by S. line. That was a course. With another note of this under his latitude and longitude, the boy sprang up, folded the chart into a square to fit his pocket, dropped the compass into another pocket, and smiled nervously.

“I reckon I’d better eat something,” he said.

Returning to the kitchen, he partook of a slice of cold ham, some bread and butter, and a big drink of water. As he started to leave, he again paused with the same nervous smile. This time he took half an apple pie, the remainder of the ham, a few slices of bread, and filled a glass fruit jar with water. Passing[160] through the house again, he stopped at his trunk and secured a light-weight sweater and a pair of gloves. Then he passed out onto the gallery, and on the bottom of the paper still hanging on the door, he wrote:

“Captain Anderson: Excuse my taking your map and compass and pie and ham. To my mother: I’m off on a trip in the aeroplane. Don’t worry. I’ll be back to-morrow or send word soon. Good-bye.

“Andy.”

A few minutes later the boy had the tarpaulin off the engine. There was a close examination of the motor, oil cups were newly filled, and a can of lubricator was tied to one of the stanchions. An empty gasoline tank was made fast in the passenger seat, and in a light basket attached to a second stanchion, the busy lad deposited his sweater, water bottle, luncheon, a hatchet, a box of matches, a small hank of seine cord, some screws, wire, and a screw-driver. Then he lashed to the middle-section lower struts a bundle of spruce strips suitable for repairing the frame of the car.

[161]

“Yo’ gwine fly away?” asked Ba, when Andy’s preparations finally suggested this to the dull-witted black.

“See this, Ba?” answered the boy, touching the empty gasoline tin. “I’m goin’ up to my uncle’s place to fill this tank.”

This was true, but only in part. The moment Andy had found his mother and his hosts absent, he had instantly conceived the idea of making a flight to the shop on the hill to secure more gasoline. When his face whitened out on the gallery, this idea had given birth to another one—he would do this, and if all seemed well, he would steel himself to take the great chance of his life. If ever, this was the time to tempt fate with his big idea. It might even mean death, but Andy put that possibility aside. He saw only the opportunity to win fame and reputation; to become a Roy Osborne or a Walter Brookins.

With the help of the colored man, Andy got the aeroplane out on the sand beach and persuaded his assistant to become his human anchor. At his uncle’s house he would have a hill on which to pick up his momentum. The boy looked at his watch—it was three minutes after one o’clock.

[162]

There was another delay while the vigilant would-be aviator made further preparations. With a cord, he tied his watch, facing him, on the nearest stanchion, and with four long screws made a little pocket on the lower beam of the car beneath his legs, in which he deposited his compass.

“Good-bye, Ba,” he exclaimed, these details completed, as he held out his hand.

The colored man touched his forehead in salute, and then clumsily gave the boy his powerful hand.

“Yo’ gwine come right back?” he asked.

But the boy did not reply. He was already starting the engine, and Ba fell to his task of holding the car. There was neither a break nor miss in the engine, and as the dust settled over the grim-set negro, Andy crawled into his seat.

“Hold her!” he exclaimed sharply, and once more the engine sprang into action. Faster and faster it flew, but the trembling, tugging car was safe in Ba’s powerful grip.

“All right!” shouted Andy at last, and while Ba fell back, the Pelican was cluttering over the beach with the quick roll of a sand snipe. Then she took the air. Andy did not[163] wait for altitude. As soon as he felt that the rushing air had his car on its breast, he began his turn, mounting as he did so.

It was but a moment or so until the aeroplane swept over the pier, having turned and headed north. As it approached the boat landing on which Ba had taken up his anxious watch, the boy dropped the car until it was not over fifty feet above the river.

“Wait here, Ba, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The ease with which the car worked elated Andy. That he might not become over confident and to see if everything was all right, he began to mount again at once. He seemed to fall into the trick naturally. Before............