"Oh, Frank!" he cried, "you don't believe they'd ever be so wicked as to try and stop us from searching for my father, do you? Bad as Puss Carberry is, I can't just believe he'd ever do that."
"Well, I hope not," returned the other, but there was a trifling vein of doubt in his voice, for he had long ago ceased trying to figure to what depth of depravity those two schemers might descend.
"But where do you suppose they came from right now, Frank?"
"That would be hard to tell," Frank replied. "The first you saw of them they were sailing up over yonder. Then the chances are they have quartered themselves at some town, perhaps on the river, and that this is just their first flight—a sort of look over the country."
"Yes," said Andy, "they're circling right now as though they mean to head back again."
"Well, you can't blame them much," Frank ventured, watching the actions of the aviators above with keenest interest. "Night isn't so very far away, and I should think a fellow would hardly feel like being caught out after dark down here in an airship."
"Well, hardly," Andy smiled. "Curfew must ring for us every time. Fancy dropping plump in the middle of such a jumble of forest as that is yonder, and I bet you it's just cram full of snakes, jaguars and everything else that would want to snuggle up to a poor birdboy dropped out of the clouds. Me for daylight when I go sailing down in this blessed region."
"Look, the men are beginning to recover from their fright," remarked Frank in low tones. "There's old Quito sitting up now and commencing his everlasting jabbering with the others. See him point to the biplane and then to us, Andy."
"Say, the sharp old coon is getting a pointer on us. He's telling his chums right now that the thing we've got stored away in the lazerette is just such a big bird as that going away over yonder. Am I right, Frank?"
"You never said a truer thing. But they were certainly a badly rattled crowd for a time. And we can hardly blame the poor fellows, for what could they think but that it was a tremendous bird of prey, looking them over with an eye to grub?"