"Steady as she goes, old boy," said Frank, as Harry excitedly cried to him to put on more power, "we are doing very nicely."
"But look at the Buzzard" cried the younger boy, "she's ahead of us!"
It was true their chief rival—on a lower course than the Golden Eagle—had indeed forged about half a mile to the fore. From time to time the boys could see the black figure of her operator turn about and gaze back to gauge the distance he was ahead.
The roar of the crowd had died out several minutes before and the only sound to be heard now, as the Golden Eagle swept along at a height of five hundred feet or more, was the drone of the engines of their own and the other contestants' craft.
Of the other starters, Gladwin was the nearest to the boys. He was driving ahead at a forty-mile clip about fifty feet below them and a little to the west. Owing to the construction of his machine, the wind was sweeping him more and more off his course as he rose, and the boys saw they had little to fear from him. The others were in a bunch, a quarter of a mile to the rear, and, even as they glanced back, the boys saw one of the aviators dive downward and land. Evidently something had gone wrong with his engine.
The wind was freshening and this, while good for the boys, evidently meant trouble for the Buzzard; for the black craft, swiftly as she was going, was now giving occasional giddy careens. Malvoise apparently had a hard time to keep her on an even keel.
The ground below them, a vast level plain, was dotted all over its flat surface with automobiles, men and women on horseback, and boys and men on motorcycles, but fast as the people following the aeroplanes drove their various means of progression, the sky clippers flew along even faster.
The Golden Eagle was capable of making seventy miles an hour and, as her engine warmed up and Frank speeded up the spark and found a favorable air current, she gradually picked up speed till she found her full capacity.
Through powerful binoculars Harry scrutinized the landscape ahead. It didn't take him long to make out the low white buildings, with their red roofs that marked the half-way point of the race—namely, the Harrowbrook Club. So swiftly were they going that it seemed as if the buildings rushed at them instead of their dashing toward the buildings.
Ten minutes later the Buzzard, amid a perfect scream of frenzied welcome, dropped on to the wide sweep of green lawn in front of the club-house, followed almost in the same breath by the Golden Eagle. Rapidly the other four craft left in the race descended also.