“Listen!” called out the lad in considerable excitement, and then he read from the newspaper:
“Another red, white and blue float was picked up three hundred miles from land by the steamer Royale. It proved to contain a dispatch with the readings: ‘Aug. 21, altitude one thousand feet, course due east, making splendid time. Airship Dictator: Signed, Roger Davidson, Perry Dawson, on board.’”
“That sounds like business,” exclaimed Hiram. “The twenty-first. That’s the day we started. They were forty-eight hours ahead of us.”
“Not true!” again declared young Brackett, sharply.
“You mean?” asked Dave, in wonder.
“Davidson and Dawson are not aboard of the Dictator.”
“Oh, pshaw, now how can you say that,” challenged the impetuous Hiram, “when here is the clear evidence?”
“You seem to know something we don’t know,” remarked Dave, with a close glance at Brackett. “The public prints announced that Davidson and Dawson started with the Dictator on the trip across the Atlantic on the afternoon of the nineteenth.”
“They did,” nodded Brackett. “I saw them. But they came back.”
“What’s that?” cried Hiram.