"I'd radder travel mit a air ship," remarked Carl, "dan any odder vay vat I know. It vas fine, und dot's all aboudt it."
"Right-o, matey," answered Ferral. "I used to think there was nothing like a good ship and a skipper's breeze to make a fellow in love with life, but strike me lucky if there's anything on the seas to compare with this. We can not only shift our course by putting the helm down or up, but we can dive through the air like a porpoise in the water, and then we can climb up like a blooming whale that wants to spout. I'm an air sailor from this on, as long as the Hawk's afloat. Sell her? Not for Joseph! not if some lubber was to offer us four times what we paid for her. Eh, Matt?"
"It's all right to hang onto the craft until we get at all the ins and outs of this air-ship business," replied the king of the motor boys from his place among the levers, "but if we can't make some money out of the Hawk after that, I'll have to unload my interest in her, Dick, and get busy with something more profitable. Carl and I, you know, haven't any rich uncles to stand behind us. We have to work like Sam Hill for all we get."
"Dot's right," agreed Carl. "I haf vorked all my life like Sam Hill, but I don'd got sooch a derriple sighdt now. Oof I shday hooked oop mit Matt, dough, I bed you someding for nodding I come oudt on der dop."
"Aye, aye," cried Ferral heartily, "Motor Matt's the boy to win. But I'm not going to let my rich uncle do everything for me. When we get through with the Hawk I'm going to Quebec and get back in the King's service. Nothing like the navy. My uncle wants to see me amount to something in the service, and he stands ready to give me a boost, but I told him to let me alone and watch me work my way up. I was captain of the after gun crew on the old Billy Ruffian, and——"
Ferral broke off suddenly, leaned over the rail and peered downward.
"I'm a Fiji, Matt," he went on, "if I don't think we're close to the canal. Cock your eye over the side, Carl, and take a look."
"Vell," said Carl, after a careful survey, "it vas a mighdy shtraight rifer oof it vasn't der canal."
"Put your helm over, Matt," went on Ferral, "for here's where we take a fresh tack."
Matt took a look for himself, then shifted the steering rudder so as to turn the Hawk to the left, and at right angles with the course she had been following.