“Monsieur Swift! Monsieur Newton! Hi!”
“Hi yourself,” growled Ned. “There’s the fellow, Tom.”
Tom gave the stranger a single glance and then spoke to Koku:
“Stand by the open door, Koku. Let nobody in over the gangplank but the crew. Understand?”
“Me understand, master,” said the giant, and immediately stationed himself at the top of the narrow gangplank near the stern which was about to be drawn inboard.
When the stranger with the papers came to the plank the giant waved him commandingly away. The man started to argue. He might as well have argued with a stone post. Koku could not understand a word of English when he felt that way! Nor did any other language sound right, although the man tried French, German, and several other tongues. Koku was deaf.
When the supposed representative of the Naval Board tried to advance up the plank, the giant stooped, raised both plank and man, and shook the latter off to the ground as though he had been a beetle.
Then the last of the crew came aboard and Koku drew in the plank and closed the door. Every other arrangement had been made. The propellers began to spin. The hawsers had been cast off. The great flying boat began bumping over the field.
They could not hear the foreign looking fellow’s voice, but they saw that he ran after the flying boat, screaming, for several hundred yards. Then the Winged Arrow gathered speed enough for her jump-off, and she rose heavily, slanting upward at a good pitch, and wheeled away toward the sea.
“If that fellow does represent a Government Bureau, we’ll hear about it when we get back,” said Ned, somewhat worried.