“I should think that bristles might be the less unpleasant.”
“So did I. Just once. Never again, though. I had to carry a pillow around with me for a week after that session.”
“If I,” remarked Bill, “had your imagination, Charlie, I’d be worth more than John D. Rockefeller!”
“Raspberries!”
For a time they kept silence, unbroken save for the humming drone of the engine.
“I wonder where that hideaway is we were talking about?” Charlie said after a while.
“Well, it isn’t located on our coast, if we’re bound there now. This plane is pointing straight for Northern Europe.”
“Gee! Do you really think we’re going across—making a trans-Atlantic flight?”
“Not a chance, kid, with the gas we’ve got aboard this crate. If you ask me, the Flying Fish is heading for a mother ship of some sort. This gang will have to operate from a steamer if they have no land base. Slap on those sea glasses you were using and take a squint dead ahead beyond the Fish—Smoke on the horizon, isn’t there?”
“Sure is. Yes, I can make it out plainly now. Say, you don’t realize how fast we’re traveling until you get a bead on something in the distance. The ship is still hull down, but the smoke seems to be getting denser—”