"And where is your official army timekeeper?"
"Here," answered Lieutenant McBride, saluting. "Are we the first to cross the continent?"
How anxiously Dick waited for the answer. "No, not the first," replied the San Francisco officer. "One biplane arrived yesterday. What is your time?"
Lieutenant McBride made a hasty calculation.
"Sixty-two hours, forty minutes and fourteen seconds from, New York, taking out the time of two landings," was the reply.
"Then you win!" cried Captain Weston, as he introduced himself. "That is, unless this other craft can better your time. For the first arrival was seventy-two hours altogether."
And Dick had won, for the biplane with which he had just had the exciting race, had consumed more than eighty hours, exclusive of stops, from coast to coast.
"Hurray, Dick! You win!" cried Innis, clapping his chum on the back.
"The best trans-continental flight ever made!" declared Captain Weston, as he congratulated the young millionaire.
"I'd like to have gotten here first," murmured Dick.