“Why—yes! It surely is an aëroplane. But how did it get over there?” he exclaimed. “I’ve been watching the other contestants, and they’re all near by. Who can it be?”
Sybil had glasses, too, and she focussed them on the approaching airship.
“It looks very much like Uncle Burthon’s imitation of the aircraft,” she murmured.
“By Jove! That’s what it is!” cried Steve. “How dare he fly it, after it has been withdrawn?”
“Uncle Burthon will dare anything,” she retorted, coldly. “But he is making the mistake of his life to-day—if that is really his aëroplane.”
“Why, he’s driving straight toward Orissa,” said Steve, indignantly. “What is the fellow trying to do—bump the aircraft?”
Sybil laid a warning hand on his arm and glanced into the blind woman’s startled face.
“Orissa is all right,” she announced in calm tones.
But Orissa did not seem all right to Steve, who was growing excessively nervous; nor even to Sybil, whose face was stern and set as she watched the maneuvers of the two craft through her powerful glasses.
“It’s Tyler,” she said softly, meaning that the little chauffeur was operating Burthon’s device. Steve nodded, and thereafter they were silent.