“Probably,” grinned Carl, “with a surf washing twenty feet up on the rocks! Why,” he continued, “there wouldn’t be enough of us left in a minute to wad a gun.”
“The Louise will make it all right!” Jimmie insisted. “I’ve pulled her into the air in less than two hundred feet!”
“The Bertha can make anything the Louise can,” Ben answered rather impatiently. “I’ll go first with Kit and see what the prospects are,” he continued. “If I’m not killed, you can follow.”
Kit shivered as he stepped into the seat.
“I wish right now,” he grumbled, “that I was asleep in Robinson’s barn.”
“Steady now, hold her right!” Jimmie called out, as Ben pressed the starter and the wheels under the aeroplane began to revolve. “Hold her tight and steady, and push on the bottom of the seat when you get over the ocean. If you drop, whistle!”
“Cut it out, you little idiot!” stormed Carl. “That’s no fool of a trick Ben’s trying to do! The air massed before and under the machine as it moves along over the ground will push over the precipice, and then the aeroplane will shoot downward, no matter if the wheels do leave the surface before she comes to the edge.”
“That will be all right, if she comes up again!” Jimmie grinned.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t feel so merry over the proposition if you were going in the first machine,” Carl said, impatiently.
“Huh!” grunted Jimmie with an exasperating smile, “we’ve got to go over the precipice, too, haven’t we?”