The canoes were hastily loaded with duffle and as, with Lathrop and Billy in one and Quatty leading in the other, they made their way along the dark channels, Lathrop was blessing the days back in old New York when he had determined to learn to run an aeroplane.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LATHROP AS AN AIR PILOT.
“Dere she is, massa.”
Quatty’s dark figure standing up in the canoe was outlined against the deep ultramarine blue of the night sky as he pointed to an indistinct blur on the horizon.
“She” both the boys instantly realized with a thrill was the mound-builders’ island on which the Golden Eagle II had been left. They had been paddling hard all night and sometimes poling where the maze of streams they followed shallowed to a mere puddle. With the sudden nearing of their goal a new fear was borne in upon them.
Would the aeroplane be there? Or had the same mysterious forces that held the Boy Aviators captive wrecked their ship, too?
Silently—after the first flush of the excitement at Quatty’s having guided them right through a wilderness that it seemed impossible to traverse except at random—the boys paddled on. Their minds were both busy with the same question. What would they find when they got there? Perhaps after all their errand would prove to be in vain.
Lathrop was the first to voice the apprehension, they both felt.
“Suppose the Golden Eagle II is gone?” he asked in a low voice.
“Then we will hunt up the Tarantula, get a detachment of bluejackets and clean out the Everglades before we’ll give up the search,” was the determined reply of the young reporter. Billy was rising to the emergency.