“Gettin’ cold?” asked Buck wonderingly.
“I’m goin’ to take a stroll while Alan runs the shop,” answered Roy laughing. Selecting a can of special lubricating oil, he loosened its screw cap and then, pausing at the store room door to call “all ready” to Alan at the wheel, he stepped onto the gallery and, climbing lightly over the rail, caught the guard cable in his left hand and made his way out on the suspended gangway leading to the starboard propeller.
The moment Roy reached the edge of the terrific gale shooting rearward from the heard but unseen propeller blades he gripped his support anew, and while the fragile looking but strong ropelike bridge swayed dizzily in the gale, made his way without hesitation to the propeller frame. Buck and Bob almost held their breaths while they watched Roy, crouched to break the force of the compressed atmosphere, raise the oil reservoir lid and pour the liquid into the supply tank. He returned in safety, Alan regulating the equilibrium as he did so and then, adding a pair of goggles to his outfit, repeated the same work on the port reservoir.
“Are you going to do that to-night?” asked Buck thoughtfully.
“About three times,” answered Roy, removing his protecting appliances.
“If you’re busy,” volunteered the ambitious Buck, “I can do it. I’ve already got orders to look after the rudder bearings. I’d like to be something. ‘Chief Oiler’ would suit me!”
“Like as not,” answered the amused Roy. “But, you see, you’re a sort of guest. They don’t take chances with guests. And I’m a paid hand.”
The speed of the Flyer was so terrific that there seemed no long view of any one point. No sooner was a hill or town plainly sighted than the lightninglike airship seemed over it and, in a few more minutes, the place had faded into gray astern. The moment Alan announced to Roy that Woburn was in sight Bob called to Buck:
“Then Boston’s also in sight ten miles abeam.”
“And the sea!” shouted Buck.