“What are they doing?” he cried.
“Getting ready to take off,” shouted Tim. “They’re climbing into the plane. Here they come!”
“See anything of Ralph?”
“No, but there’s a small shack on one side of the clearing and he is probably in there. We’ll take care of these chaps first and then drop down and see where they’ve hidden Ralph.”
Hunter snapped on the switch and the motor roared into action again.
Tim kept his glasses trained on the plane below. The wing motors had been started and the ship, after a run of thirty or forty feet, was rising almost vertically. It was a beautiful take-off and Tim knew that the master hand of Pierre Petard was at the controls.
“We’ll let them get out of the forest country,” Tim shouted at Hunter. “If we swoop down on them now we’ll have them sneaking into some small clearing where we can’t follow.”
“Right,” cried Hunter as he swung his biplane westward and took up the pursuit.
For half an hour the strange game of hunted and hunter continued with Tim and Hunter keeping five to six thousand feet above the other ship.
When they were finally over open country Tim motioned for Hunter to give his plane the gun and the field manager, anxious for action, opened the throttle and sent his ship thundering downward.