“Hold on a minute,” cried Frank suddenly, “there is one thing we’ve forgotten.”
He ran back into the hut and reappeared with a small object he had fished out of his toilet-bag.
It was a silken American flag. The boys attached it to a small pair of halyards at the stern of the chassis and ran it up.
“Come on in with you, Quatty,” cried Harry, when this was completed.
Speechless with terror the negro hobbled up to the machine and hesitatingly clambered into the chassis. He sat quivering like a jelly on the floor of the pilot-house as the boys followed him.
“What are you squatting on the floor for?” asked Harry, laughing, “don’t you want to see the scenery?”
“Ah can see all ah wan’ right yar,” was the terrified darky’s reply.
With a final handclasp the boys followed the negro into the chassis and Harry took up his place at the engines and Frank got into the steerman’s narrow seat. Lathrop and Billy Barnes were at the propellers ready to give them the twist that would start the machinery.
“Let her go,” cried Frank with a backward glance. Harry bent low over the carburettor and carefully adjusted it and the lubricating system.
The next minute, with a roar like that of a dozen Gatling guns, the engine started up. Volumes of blue smoke poured from the exhaust which also shot out jets of ruddy flame. To anyone not used to the racket of a powerful engine suddenly turned up to its full power it was actually terrifying. Quatty writhed in a paroxysm of terror on the quivering floor of the pilot-house as the whole fabric of the aeroplane shook as if it had been convulsed by an earthquake.