The editor nodded his head with a smile.
“The young man we saw leaving your office as we entered it?” asked Ned edging forward.
“Buckingham Stewart, a Herald reporter,” answered the editor. “He seems to me to have all the qualities you name. I don’t know that he’ll care to take the risk. If he does, I offer him as my representative.”
“Don’t you worry about him not goin’ if he gets a chance,” volunteered Bob.
“Alan,” said Ned with a broad smile, “if this fellow was smart enough to find out all he did about the Flyer without a look at it in the daylight or a word from us, it’ll take him about fifteen minutes to understand it when he really sees it. I say, take him.”
“I’m agreeable,” answered Alan and the crew was complete.
CHAPTER IX
DUTIES OF THE Ocean Flyer CREW
President J. W. Atkinson of the Aeroplane Company, was always ready to offer chance visitors noon-time refreshment. In fact, for over ten days, the Airship Boys had not left the factory in the middle of the day but had devoted the resting hour to a hasty luncheon and talk with Engineer Osborne, his son Roy, an experienced aviator, and other skilled employes. Therefore, at two thirty o’clock, as on their previous busy days, the boys were at luncheon in the same place with their guests. Mr. Atkinson sat with them and kept Major Honeywell and the Herald managing editor company over their cigars.
In spite of the injunction of the engineer of the Universal Transportation Company (which by the way had no business connection with the American-Aeroplane Company although Mr. Atkinson was a heavy stockholder in each) that experiments should be made for several days to ascertain the wind pressure on the new airship in flight, it was at once agreed that these voyages must be made at night.