“Perhaps you’re right,” exclaimed his mother laughing. “But you’ll have to back me up when your father finds out about it.”
“Why he practically told me to buy an aeroplane,” answered Bob soberly. “He really put the idea into my head.”
Hal could not accompany the purchasing committee. His positive orders were not to miss a day’s schooling. And he wouldn’t write home and ask permission because he didn’t want to say anything about his suddenly acquired fortune. He and Bob bought a draft for three thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars with their checks, and Tom and Mac each contributed one hundred dollars out of their portions to cover the traveling expenses of the committee.
The almost continuous meetings of the boys had finally resulted in the following program: Hal attended a private preparing school that granted a vacation of a week at Easter. Tom obtained his mother’s consent to absent himself from school during the same week, and all had planned to secure the aeroplane at once and ship it directly to Tampa, just south of the Mecca of all their outing dreams—Anclote Island—three hundred miles distant from Pensacola.
To this much-talked-of island, Captain Joe was to carry the club members in the Three Sisters. The aeroplane was then to be put together in Tampa, conveyed through the air to the uninhabited island, and for four or five glorious days at least, there was to be a carnival of aerial exploration by land and sea.
The original attraction at Anclote Island had been the unsurpassed tarpon fishing to be found there. In the three years that the club had been in existence, the one big dream of each of its members had been the long cruise that they were some day to make to this place. Now, tarpon fishing became a secondary matter. But Anclote Island was still the center of their dreams.
The acquisition of the aeroplane gave the island new possibilities. It was on the edge of the Florida Everglades—the great, mysterious, impenetrable swamp whose unexplored depths suddenly became a new lode stone.
The plans discussed seemed endless: A temporary camp on the island, excursions to the semi-tropic shore, fishing trips on the sound and gulf, and, above all, daring forays to the interior of the state in quest of adventures in the Everglade swamp and among the hidden Seminole Indians.
Finally, on a Saturday evening, a cavalcade including Mrs. Balfour, Mrs. Allen, Hal and Mac accompanied Bob and Tom to the train, and the aeroplane committee was off for New York. Mrs. Allen brought with her a little basket containing a luncheon. Tom had never made a long railroad journey before, but he knew that in these days of the sumptuous dining cars travelers no longer carried food. And, since he and Bob had ample means to do as other travelers, before the boys turned in that night, every scrap of fried chicken, jelly, cake and pickles had been eaten.
Just before noon on Monday, the two boys reached the president’s office in the shops of the American Aeroplane Company’s works in the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey. President Atkinson heard what the two lads had to say in open astonishment. He cross-examined them, smiled, laughed, inspected their draft and then grew serious. Finally, he called in his engineering expert, Mr. Osborne, and this man heard Bob’s story.