Mortlake paled, and caught at a post erected to hold up a telephone line. He gazed at the oncoming aeroplanes. There were three of them now, but one was far behind, laboring slowly. But the first was unquestionably the Golden Butterfly. He could catch the yellow glint of her wings. And that second craft—its silvery sheen betrayed it—was the Mortlake Cobweb, as Roy had called it.
"Come on! Come on!" shouted Mortlake, uselessly as he knew, "what's the matter with you?"
But alas, the Cobweb didn't "come on." Some three or four minutes after the Golden Butterfly had alighted and been swallowed up in a surging, yelling throng of enthusiasm-crazed aero fans, the Cobweb fluttered wearily to the ground, unnoticed almost amid the excitement over the Golden Butterfly's feat.
Mortlake raged, old Mr. Harding almost wept, and Fanning sulkily explained that it wasn't his fault, the cylinders having overheated again. But not all of this could wipe out those figures that had just been put up on the board, which proclaimed a victory for the Prescott aeroplane by a margin of three and twenty-one hundredths minutes!
CHAPTER XXIV.
FRIENDS AND FOES—CONCLUSION.
The winning of the "Sky Cruise," as the newspapers had dubbed it, was the talk of Hampton that night. Not a small part of the zest with which it was discussed was caused by the fact that a young girl had driven the machine through its daring dash. The wires from New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and Richmond were kept hot with instructions from editors to their representatives demanding interviews with the Girl Aviators. But to the chagrin of the newspaper representatives, after seeing their machine housed, the party had vanished.
This, on investigation, was not as mysterious as it had at first appeared. There was a small door in the back of the Nameless's shed, and at this door there had been waiting, for some moments before the conclusion of the race, a big automobile. In it were seated a bronzed man, with broad shoulders, and an alert, wideawake expression, and a boy, whose foot was propped up on an extemporized contrivance affixed to the seat.