"Appropriate name the 'Golden Hind,'" remarked Bramsdean, as the three ex-R.A.F. officers made their way towards the concealed hangar. "That's what Drake's ship was called, and he was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world."
"Yes," replied Fosterdyke. "We must take it as an augury that this 'Golden Hind' will do in the air what her namesake did on the sea."
"Not in every respect, I hope," said Kenneth Kenyon, with a laugh. "Drake did a considerable amount of filibustering on his voyage, I believe."
"Ah, yes," answered Sir Reginald. "Those were good old days. Now left," he added. "Mind yourselves, the brambles are a bit dangerous."
Turning off the grass-grown road and down a side path, the two chums found themselves entering a dense thicket that formed an outer fringe of the pine wood.
"Short cut," remarked Fosterdyke, laconically. "Now, there you are."
A glade in the woods revealed the end of a lofty corrugated iron shed, the hangar in which the "Golden Hind" was fast approaching completion. The baronet "knew his way about." He knew how to deal with the dictatorial and often completely muddled officials who ran the Surplus Disposals Board, and had succeeded in obtaining, at a comparatively low cost, a practically new airship shed, together with an enormous quantity of material.
"Now tell me what you think of her," he said, throwing open a small door in the rear end of the building.
Kenyon and Bramsdean paused in astonishment at what they saw. The "Golden Hind" was neither airship nor aeroplane in the strict sense of the word, but a hybrid embodying the salient features of both. The fuselage, constructed almost entirely of aluminium, was a full 120 feet in length, and enclosed so as to form a series of cabins or compartments. Amidships these attained a beam of 15 feet, tapering fore and aft until the end compartments terminated in a sharp wedge. Wherever there were observation windows they were "glazed" with light but tough fire-proof celluloid, sufficiently strong to withstand wind-pressure.
On either side of the hull, as Fosterdyke termed it, were six planes arranged in pairs, each being 30 feet in fore and aft direction, and projecting 25 feet from the side of the fuselage. Thus the total breadth of the "Golden Hind" was well under 60 feet. On angle brackets rising obliquely from the fuselage were six large aluminium propellers, chain-driven by means of six 350-h.p. motors.