"Do you think that a safe plan?"
"Oh, yes; they won't dare abduct me again."
"Then," Ned added, "we may as well get on the way. Asuncion is somewhere about twelve hundred miles from here, and we've got to make it by daylight."
"What's that?" asked Lyman, hardly believing he had heard aright.
"You would better say in two days."
"The Nelson can make it in eight hours," Ned replied, "if we don't drop into any holes in the air or adverse currents."
"Holes in the air!" repeated Lyman.
"Sure," answered Ned. "The atmosphere surrounding the earth is just like the water in the large reservoirs—there are deep places and shallow places, holes you can drop in, and currents like the Gulf Stream current, the Japanese current, which warms the northern states and British Columbia, and the Arctic Humboldt current, which sends a cold stream down the Pacific coast of South America. If we have no difficulties with these rivers of the air, and the wind does not come up too strong, we can make Asuncion by six o'clock in the morning. It is about ten now."
"What sort of an airship have you here?" demanded Lyman, amazed at the thought of running at the rate of two hundred miles an hour or a hundred and fifty, at least.
"She was built for speed and endurance," was the reply. "Now cover your face with this mask, unless you want to have your breath blown out of the back of your head, and we'll get under way."
That was a night ride which neither of the participants ever forgot. The first part of the night was dark. Then a moon shone down from a cloudless sky, showing all the beauties of that magnificent country.