“No. I agree with, you, Frank. I’ll take only one with me on the first trip, and that’ll be you.”
“Why me? I don’t want to ride alone with you. You’ll be busy all the time. I want somebody else to talk with. Let Pickles go the first trip.”
“All right. I don’t care; only I want to try the ship with one passenger before I take two. Pickles, you’re not afraid to go first, are you?”
“No, I ain’t afraid,” replied Walter, smiling. He seldom became excited or disturbed. Doubtless he would have watched the moon shoot across the heavens with no more fear than the average boy feels over a burning house or a runaway horse.
“I ain’t afraid either,” insisted Frank, but he did not offer to make the first trip with Mr. Miles.
“All right, you’ll have a chance to prove your bravery next time,” assured the latter. “Come on, Pickles, we must hurry, for it’s getting late and I’ve got to make two more trips before sundown. It’s after four o’clock now.”
“You can make ’em all in half an hour, can’t you?” inquired Hal.
“Pretty nearly, if everything goes well. But something might happen to delay me.”
Walter and the aviator now got aboard the aeroplane and Mr. Miles started the engine. The two big propellers turned faster and faster, and the biplane gave a few jerks and tugs, then leaped and bounded forward violently over the uneven ground until the wheels no longer touched the earth. Rapidly now she arose in the air, circling around towards the north.
In order to insure safety for Walter while giving his entire attention to the management of the vessel, Miles had closed the front and rear slides, so that they were enclosed in a room, or cabin, twelve feet long, including the tapering forequarter, and five feet wide. The aviator sat at the wheel in the narrow prow, while Walter was free to move about as he wished.