CHAPTER XIII
THE STRANGE AIRPLANE
The first thing the boys did the following morning, after spending the night at the home of Mr. Choate, was to go down to the beach and see if their airplane was all right. They found one of the two negroes asleep, but the other fellow was faithfully on guard, and everything about the Sky-Bird seemed just as they had left it, although the watchers said that a considerable number of curious townspeople had come to look at the machine the day before and they had been very busy keeping venturesome boys off the craft.
Our friends let the negroes go to get their breakfasts and some sleep, and engaged two others to take up the watch. Following this, in company with Mr. Choate, they all retired to the bathhouse, secured bathing suits and had a fine time disporting themselves in the warm surf for the next hour. The youths had never experienced Gulf Stream bathing before, and the water was so enticing that it was hard to drag themselves out of it.
As they were in the act of emerging to dress themselves, a black speck, which all had noticed in the northern sky, had developed by nearer approach so that they thought they could recognize it as an airplane. It was coming down the coast very rapidly. Wondering if its pilot intended to land in the vicinity, they gathered on the beach and curiously waited for it to come nearer.
At times they were puzzled to know whether the approaching object were really an airplane or a great bird, for it surely looked like a bird with its swelling breast-line and slightly tilted broad-shouldered wings. Closer and closer it came. It was flying very high.
When it was almost over them, Mr. Giddings uttered a startled ejaculation; "My stars, boys! It's our machine!"
Paul and John Ross and Tom Meeks were equally astonished. They had noticed the strong resemblance at the same moment. Involuntarily, with Mr. Giddings and Mr. Choate, they turned their heads up the beach to see if the Sky-Bird II was where they had left it.
They saw its huge outline and its patrolling black guards. It had not changed position. Even a group of gaping Miami citizens lent reality to the situation, and some of the latter were gazing aloft at the other flying-machine, as our friends had been doing.
The stranger above them evidently had no intention of stopping. Instead of circling the town, as he would have done had he intended to land, he swept straight over and kept on his southward course, heading across Florida Strait.