She Settled into a Swift, Disastrous Nose Dive[Frontispiece]
PAGE
Like a Whirlwind He Came at His Antagonist[74]
"Ask Them Their Position Now," the General Snapped Out[125]
In a Wide Circle the Plane was Brought to the Surface[165]

The Brighton Boys in Transatlantic Flight

CHAPTER I Waiting for the Hop-Off

"Br-r-r-r, but this is a chilly section of the map!"

The speaker was Jack Carew—Big Jack Carew, they had called him at Brighton. The descriptive prefix had clung to him throughout all the changes and vicissitudes of the Great War, and the indications were now that he would continue to be known as Big Jack Carew through the balance of his natural life.

And well he deserved the cognomen, for as he stood in the doorway of the little shack-like building in which he and his three comrades had spent their first night in Halifax, he showed up well over six feet in height, with a depth of chest and breadth of shoulder which bespoke tremendous strength and almost unlimited physical endurance.

Indeed, it was a fact well known to scores of men that but for Carew's possession of these two qualities, coupled with his timely arrival at a desolate and isolated spot in northern France one bitterly cold night in January, 1918, Donald Harlan would not have been alive to be in Newfoundland now as a member of the American crew which Carew captained, and which was even now making ready for participation in the first Transatlantic aeroplane contest.