"Well, you could carry small artillery aboard here if you didn't have so much company," answered the army man. "It is all a question of weight and size. However, I believe, for the present, the most valuable aid airships will render will be in the way of scouting. But I don't want to see a war just for the sake of using our airships. Though it is well to be prepared to take advantage of their peculiar usefulness."
After supper they prepared to spend their first night aboard the airship on her prize-winning attempt. They decided to cut down the speed a little.
"Not that there's much danger of hitting anything," Dick explained, "though possibly Uncle Ezra and Larson might come up behind and crash into us. But at slower speed the machinery is not so strained, and there is less likelihood of an accident."
"That's right," agreed Mr. Vardon. "And an accident at night, especially when most of us are asleep, is not so easily handled as when it occurs in daylight. So slow her down, Dick."
The motor was set to take them along at thirty miles an hour, and they descended until they were fifteen hundred feet above the earth, so in case of the Abaris becoming crippled, she would not have to spend much time in making a landing.
Everything was well looked to, and then, with Dick and Mr. Vardon taking the first watch, the others turned in. And they were so tired from the rather nervous excitement of the day of the start, that they were soon asleep. Dick and the aviator took turns at the wheel, and attended to the necessary adjustments of the various machines.
It might seem strange for anyone to sleep aboard a moving airship, but, the truth of the matter was, that our friends were realty worn out with nervous exhaustion. They had tired themselves out, not only physically, but mentally, and sleep was really forced on them. Otherwise they might not have slumbered at all.
It was shortly past midnight when Dick, who, in spite of his attempts to keep awake, had partly dozed off, was suddenly aroused by a howl from Grit.
"What—what's the matter, old boy?" he asked. "In trouble again?"
There came another and louder howl. "Where is he?" asked Mr. Vardon, looking in from the pilot-house.