The firemen were just getting a stream on the blaze when the youths arrived.
"Well, thank our lucky stars for that," exclaimed Don Harlan as he realized that, devilish as the evident plot had been, it had not succeeded to the point of setting fire to their hangar.
The blaze was in a large box of excelsior, which had been placed close to the rear boarding of the hangar. There was no doubt but that someone had set about deliberately to destroy that structure and the machine within. That the plan had not succeeded, it turned out later, was due to the fact that a private watchman, smelling smoke and tracing it to its source, had discovered the flames before they had entirely consumed the excelsior. He had pulled the big box a few feet away from the building and then had sounded the alarm.
The mystery lay in who wanted to destroy that hangar, and how he had dragged the box there without being discovered.
Extinguishing the fire was, of course, but a matter of a few moments. Immediate examination was made of the box. Unfortunately it had been partly consumed and the fire had, as fate would have it, eaten away that particular part which undoubtedly would have revealed to whom originally it was consigned.
There was no question in the minds of anyone, however, but that it was one of the sort in which practically every crew that was to participate in the flight had received a part of its equipment.
"There's something rotten in Denmark, all right, to quote our friend Shakespeare again," said Big Jack Carew, "and it's plain enough that we've got to use every precaution against accident from now on. Somebody is trying to put us out of this contest. We might thank them for the compliment, but I wish they would just come out into the open sufficiently to reveal their identity."
"Well, there isn't any doubt in my mind that we frustrated the original plot ourselves," added Fred Bentner, who by this time had hobbled up, and had taken in the whole situation from the little he had seen and the snatch of conversation he had heard.
"Yes," agreed the other two. "No doubt about it now. The fellow we saw sneaking around here earlier in the night was bent upon mischief."
"And if I get my hands on him I'll have him in the calaboose before he knows what's happened to him," added a voice from behind, and all four turned to confront Captain Isaac Allerson, late sailor of the northern seas, onetime whaling captain, and now, by virtue of the votes and confidence of his fellow-citizens, the town "constabule."