“We get you, sergeant,” was Billy’s reply; “you have our promise not to butt into any shindy where we are not invited.”
“Turn them loose,” was the sergeant’s order to the little man, who was struggling to restrain the leaping hounds.
Two streaks of brown and yellow flashed across the plain.
“All aboard!” shouted Strogoff.
There was a scramble into the biplanes, and a lightning-like getaway.
The hounds were already far afield, but nothing on two feet or four, on wheel or keel, can stay ahead of an aeroplane, and the scampering animals were overhauled in a jiffy, and the pilots holding to low speed to even up the chase.
Along a marshy stretch of ground the dogs seemed at fault, going at zigzag, but ever returning to the spot where first the scent was lost.
The little man, crouching behind Henri in the biplane, requested the pilot to descend forthwith, and as it was simply a ’round and ’round operation to keep in sight of the baffled hounds, there was really nothing else to do but stop.
Billy had already anticipated the situation, and had started to volplane even before his chum had set the planes for landing.
The master of the hounds, whom Strogoff addressed as Petro, was forced to literally drag his canine charges away from their persistent adherence to the one spot on the high side of the marsh.