“I have started on an outing with my colored friend, without any particular destination in view; when we have had enough sport, we shall return. Who are you?” queried the youth, feeling warranted in asking a few equally pointed questions.
“My name is Milo Morgan; I have no special home, but stop where the notion takes me; my business is invention, as it relates to the aeroplane.”
“May I ask what improvements you have made, Professor?”
He hesitated a moment as if uncertain what to reply.
“Not half as many as I am sure of making in the near future. The rigging of a searchlight cannot be called an invention, for it has long been in common use on warships and others, and all aeroplanes are supplied with electricity. I have rigged up a wireless telegraph, so as to pick out messages from the air; I have succeeded in compounding a fluid which as I told you is ten times stronger than gasoline; I run without noise, and my uplifter will carry me vertically upward, as high as I care to go.”
“I should think you were blamed near the limit,” suggested Abisha Wharton, profoundly interested in what the Professor was saying.
“I have only begun; and I intend to justify the name of my monoplane.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
“Because I haven’t spoken it, but when you have a daylight view of my machine you will see the name painted on the under side of the wings, ‘The Dragon of the Skies.’”
This was said with so much solemnity that Harvey had hard work to hide his smile. He no longer doubted that he was talking with a crank.