Tom placed a hand over the frightened farm hand’s mouth.
“You want to get to Portstown, don’t you?”
“Yer—yer—yes, sir.
“Well, you’re going there by the air-line express. Now be quiet. Heiny, for goodness sake, cook us up some supper, and look lively about it,—we’re almost famished.”
The next morning will be one long remembered in Portstown. Early rising citizens saw, swooping down from the skies, a vast aerial craft manned by a crew of youths anxiously looking over the side to descry the best landing place. They had arrived above the town shortly before daylight but Jack had decided to cruise about till the light grew stronger, not wishing to risk a landing in the dark. He adopted, in fact, the same tactics that the captain of a vessel about to enter a strange port would employ.
By the time the Electric Monarch swooped down into the twenty-acre park in which the fair was to be held, there was a crowd of several hundred people in the streets clamoring about the entrance to the fenced grounds. The Electric Monarch was actually a fact, a circumstance which was astonishing to a good many of the Portstown folks who had thought that Captain Sprowl’s flowery advertisement was a good deal in the nature of an exaggeration. But now they had seen, with their own eyes, the most wonderful craft of its kind in existence, and the whole town was wild with excitement and curiosity.
Early as the hour was, Captain Sprowl, who had been on the lookout for the boys, soon came dashing into the grounds in a runabout automobile. He extended them a hearty welcome and showed them where they would be quartered during the carnival, that is, if they wished to camp on the grounds. The boys unanimously voted in favor of the camping proposal. They decided that it would be much more fun than stopping at a hotel.
They accompanied the captain to the hotel for breakfast, however, a big crowd following them through the streets, much to the boys’ embarrassment. The captain, however, gloried in the notoriety.