Just then a big brown ant floated out from under a raft-like slice of pineapple.
“But I reckon plain water’s pretty good on a hot day,” he added less enthusiastically. Dropping the pitcher of Florida ‘cup,’ Andy hastened to the pump and took a deep drink of pure water.
Refreshed, he began systematically examining the living room. The bookshelves afforded a rich mine. From these, he advanced to the table where, manifestly, his uncle had done his reading and writing.
There was scarcely a thing here that did not give Andy a new thrill of joy. Everything seemed covered with writing or figures; sheets of paper, record books, piles of letters, engineering cross-ruled paper. One after another was put aside for later examination.
Then Andy came unexpectedly upon that which afterwards meant so much to him: the instant explanation of the puzzle of the little model. Opening a pad of letter paper, he saw written in a careful hand, several pages addressed to Mr. Octave Chanute, of Chicago.
Andy knew Mr. Chanute by reputation to be a skilled engineer and the father of airship experiments in America. He knew that it was Mr. Chanute’s experiments with kites and gliders on the sand dunes of Indiana that had first interested the Wright brothers, and the boy glowed with pride to know that his uncle had been in correspondence with such a man.
The letter that the boy found he read breathlessly—it was dated at least two weeks before his uncle’s death—and had not been mailed because it had not been finished. When the boy had read it twice and then stood, his eyes wide and his heart throbbing wildly, he made the resolution that he never wavered from, that turned the possibility of the making of an aeroplane into an insistent determination out of which came the Pelican in which Andy had his great adventure and in which he sought to solve, and did solve the mystery of the Great Pink Pearl.
The momentous letter read: