“Look down there! What do you suppose that is?”
“Must be a whale. See how it’s plowing along through the waves!”
“And right on top of the water, too. But if it’s a whale why doesn’t it spout?”
Three boys, who were sailing over the waters of Massachusetts Bay in a large air craft, had seen a strange sight as they looked down through the glass floor of the cabin of their motorship, and their comments and questions followed rapidly. So engrossed were they with the appearance of what seemed to be some marine monster that, for a few moments, they paid no attention to the course of their boat, which was carrying them along just below the clouds.
It was not until Jerry Hopkins, the oldest of the three lads, called the attention of his companions to the need of giving heed to their craft, that the other two—Ned Slade and Bob Baker—turned their eyes from the strange creature below them—if creature it was.
“I say there, Ned!” exclaimed Jerry, “just throw in a little more gas, will you? or we ourselves will be down in those same waves in a little while. We’re sinking!”
“That’s so!” agreed Bob. “But still we wouldn’t be in much danger, for the automatic air planes would set when we began to fall too fast.”
“Even at that,” went on Jerry, who was steering the Comet, as the motorship was named, “even then I think it’s just as well not to take too many chances. Turn on a little more gas, Ned.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” exclaimed the one addressed, and with a quick motion of one of many shining levers and wheels in the pilot house he sent some of the compressed gas into the lifting-bags of the Comet, thus making her more buoyant.
“There it is again!” cried Bob, once more pointing below. They all looked, Jerry turning his attention away from the wheel that guided the craft. First, however, he looked ahead to make sure there was no danger of a collision, for the boys had come to Boston to attend an aviation meet, and at times there had been so many of the “birdmen” in the sky-space that a collision was really not so unlikely as at first it would seem.