“Wow,” said he. “That’s it, all right. That’s the continuous dash which is being sent out from the secret radio plant to control that little plane. Let’s keep it in sight, Frank, and see where it goes. Don’t close in on it. Keep just about this distance. I can watch it through the glass, and I’ll give you your bearings if you lose sight of it. Probably there is only one man aboard, and he won’t have a glass, and won’t know we are following him.” 49
“All right,” responded Frank. “Here’s where we’d turn toward shore. But we’ll stick to his trail a while.”
With that he began edging the plane out to sea.
CHAPTER VI
A FALL INTO THE SEA
Out over the shining sea flew the glistening all-metal plane, and the spirits of the boys lifted to the chase. The oldest fever of the blood known to man is that of the chase. It comes down to us from our prehistoric ancestors who lived by the chase, got their daily food by it, wooed and won by it, and fought their battles by it in that dim dawn of time when might was right and the law of tooth and claw was the only rede.
Gone was the irritability that had possessed Frank in the noise and din, the crowding walls and swarming hordes of human beings, back in the city. Below him lay the broad Atlantic, from their height seeming smooth as a ball-room floor, with the surface calm and unruffled. No land was in sight ahead. The water stretched to infinity, over the edge of the world. For a wonder, not a sail broke that broad expanse due south, although to the west were several streamers of smoke where ships stood in for port, 51 hull down on the far horizon, while closer at hand was a little dot which Bob, swinging the glasses, made out to be a four-masted schooner.
It was a long distance off, ten or fifteen miles, judged Bob. The tiny plane was heading in that direction. Was it bearing away for the schooner? The question leaped into Bob’s mind. He put it into spoken words, into the transmitter.