The wonderful craft, with her precious freight, swayed drunkenly toward the crests of a group of giant ceiba trees. For one instant disaster, at the very outset of their voyage, appeared inevitable.
But suddenly there was a whirring sound, like the drone of a monstrous night beetle. The engine was driving the propeller round at top speed.
Jack twisted the steering wheel over, and the Flying Road Racer, rising at the rate of a hundred feet a minute, shot clear of the menacing tree tops.
Up and up into the night she rose, while her occupants, forgetting their first alarm in their enthusiasm, gave a mighty cheer, careless, for the minute, of who might hear it.
The voyage of the Flying Road Racer had begun under a fortunate star indeed.
Directly the tree tops were cleared Jack set the planes at a rising angle, and the upward course of the Flying Road Racer was more rapid. She seemed fairly to shoot up into the ether.
“How do you like it?” asked Tom, turning his head-to speak to those in the tonneau.
“Ah’d like it better, Marse Tom, ef I didn’t feel I done lef’ mah insides behin’ me,” faltered Jupe.
“You’ll soon get over that feeling,” declared Tom confidently. “Just hark at that engine! She’s running as true as a human heart.”
“She is that,” agreed Jack, enthusiastically, “Tom, old boy, we’ve got the greatest land-and-air-craft ever put together.”