“Let’s smash that old thing to flinders first and then serve him the same way.”
“That’s the idee!” answered Sam; “we’ll make one job of it!”
And they charged together to carry out their cowardly threat.
CHAPTER XIV.
MILO MORGAN SAVES THE DAY.
As straight downward as if fired from the zenith, a tiny missile shot through the air so swiftly that no one saw it. It struck the ground directly in front of the four men and burst with a deafening report. In the same second, another followed the first, landing just behind the group with the same terrifying explosion. All saw the flash, the smoke and the flying particles.
Then a third and fourth followed with similar results. Succeeding the fire and crash a voice rang out:
“Run for your lives! Take to the woods or you are dead men!”
The command, which sounded as if it came from heaven, acted like an electric shock upon the four young men, who with gasps of dismay dived in among the trees with such headlong panic that two dropped their hats, and the others stumbled, crawling forward and scrambling to their feet as best they could.
The bewildered Harvey might have done the same, for it seemed the only way of escaping a frightful death, had he not fancied there was a familiar note in the deep bass voice. When he looked aloft, the strange occurrence was explained. Balanced directly overhead and not more than a hundred feet high, floated a monoplane. A slim man more than six feet tall and clothed in a long flapping duster was standing erect with a small, oblong object in his hand to which he had just applied a match. He let it hiss for a moment, and then tossed it away so that it fell only a few feet from where Harvey stood.
“Don’t be scared,” he called; “I’m just practicing how to drop a bomb on the deck of a vessel; these things make a loud noise but nothing more.”