"Have you ever been up?" inquired Butler of Frank.
"Never, but I'm determined to get to London if I can, and I don't care how it is."
"All right," said Butler. "We have no time to lose. I'll get out the big biplane." The plane was run out of the hangar, examined closely by the attendants, looked over in a cursory manner by the aviator himself. "Now," he said to Frank, "hop up here alongside of me, to the right. Take hold of that wooden support and put your feet on this wire. Don't look down or you may get dizzy. I'm going about five hundred feet high. Keep your eyes straight ahead and forget you're flying."
"Good-by, old fellow," said the Codfish, half in fun and half in earnest, as Frank climbed to his precarious place alongside the aviator, and then to Butler, "Where do you come down?"
"One can never tell in this business, but I will try to land in Hendon, which is only about three miles from the Club."
"And how long will it take?"
"Somewhere about thirty minutes if the wind aloft is as steady and strong as it seems to be down here."
"Frank, that will get you to Hendon at one-forty-five, and a taxi will do the rest. I'll come as fast as I can in the motor, and if we don't get pinched again I may get to dear old London in time to see the finish."
"All ready," sang out Butler. A half dozen attendants clung fast to the trail of the big biplane while another spun the propeller. The engine immediately sprang into noisy life, the roar of the exhaust drowning out all human speech in the neighborhood. Gleason saw the hands of the aviator drop off the steering-wheel in a downward sweeping signal which meant "let go," a signal instantly obeyed by the attendants, who dropped flat on the ground while the great tail of the birdlike monster swept over their heads with an ever increasing rush. For fifty or sixty feet the running gear of the machine kept on the ground, but, as the velocity increased and Butler elevated his plane, the machine gradually cleared the earth and soared aloft. The Codfish watched it as it rose and followed it in the vastness of the sky vault until there was but a mere dot against the fluffy clouds in the northern sky.