“Well, if you must know—that Whiteside feller was there, as per usual, and along come Jeff, limpin’——”
“Limping? Was he hurt?”
“Had his foot tied up, Master Larry. Said he was flyin’ and his power quit and he had to come down in a bad spot and a lot more.”
Once started on his troubles and their cause, the caretaker needed no more prompting. Jeff, he went on, had met Mr. Whiteside and said that if he wanted to fly he’d have to go in that other thing that they put in the water——”
“The hydroplane boat?” Sandy broke in to ask.
“No, the ampibbian——”
“The amphibian!”
The man nodded as they walked down toward the highway. After he helped the others to get the water-and-land ’plane onto the field, he grumbled, and had turned the propeller blades till his arms ached, the superstitious pilot, saying he had stumbled and fallen that morning and knew something would go wrong, had decided that they had no time to repair or find the trouble in the amphibian.
They must get going, he reported that Mr. Whiteside had declared, and Jeff had argued that if he had a six-B slotted bolt, he could fix his motor.
“I never did hear of a six-B slotted bolt—or any slotted bolt,” declared Dick, while Sandy and Larry assented.