"Keep your eyes open to-morrow, Fritz, or you will get lost somewhere in the rear."
"No fear, sir; there are no cobwebs on No. 2."
"What are they talking about, Buddy?" asked Billy.
"They just think they are going to beat us, that's all," interpreted Henri.
A bright clear morning presented itself for the aërial race, and Lake Constance lay like a broad mirror under the sunlight. The course was set due north and straightaway for twenty miles, and the turn fixed at a high point called Round Top, upon which, Roque informed the boys, a tall flagstaff had been mounted.
There were no preliminary trials, for both machines had been carefully groomed, and each was as fit as a fiddle.
With the aviators up the biplanes scudded down the field for the rise, and got away upon almost equal terms, the German drivers slightly in the lead, through better acquaintance with the lay of the ground. They trailed a yellow streamer, while the boys floated a band of black.
The ascent reached 2,000 feet, when the machines darted north like arrows. Roque and a group of officers about him followed the speeders through field glasses.
"They would run a swallow to death," remarked the secret agent to the aviation lieutenant at his side.
The aëroplanes had dwindled in the vision to mere specks, and there was no telling which was in the fore.