"Do you mean before we leave the land, and commence our voyage across the lake?" Frank inquired.
"Yes, that's it—more than half an hour, at the speed we're going now?" continued the other.
"Just about, I should say," Frank replied, after carefully measuring distances with his eye. "We are up pretty high, and can cover a tremendous range, you know, so we first glimpsed the lake when we were a long ways off. It may be all of forty miles away right now; and as we must be clipping along at the rate of eighty, with the breeze favorable behind us, why, half an hour ought to see us there."
Andy fell silent again.
Many times did his eyes travel from the distant water to the earth below them; and then follow this up with an uneasy stare at the other aeroplane that was flying along far ahead of them. The whole solution of the problem of course lay in the hands of the man who controlled the destinies of that stolen biplane. Would he really have the nerve to attempt a flight across that great body of fresh water, aiming to land on foreign shores, from which he could not easily be extradited?
Frank seemed to think that such was undoubtedly the intention of Casper Blue, the little man who had been actor, aviator, and yeggman in turn, during the course of his adventurous life.
He had already proven beyond any doubt that he was a capable airman, even though he did have a crippled arm. Never had the Bird boys seen an aeroplane handled with more extraordinary skill and dash than was the one that had been stolen from the hangar of Percy Carberry.
No, unless something unexpected happened to disturb the plans of the fugitive yeggmen inside the next half hour, they plainly meant to launch out on a voyage across the lake, possibly thousands of feet above its surface, and perhaps among the very clouds.
Not once did Andy dream of asking his cousin whether in this event he considered it the part of wisdom for them to follow the men who were doubly risking their lives in this mad effort to escape with their booty.
He knew Frank only too well to doubt his willingness to undertake such a trip as this. In times gone by, and especially when they were down in South America with their aeroplane, seeking Professor Bird, who had been lost, with the balloon in which he was conducting experiments on the isthmus, they had bravely faced just as serious perils as this promised to be; yes, and wrenched victory from the jaws of apparent defeat more than once.