“We can make up for lost time now,” Ned remarked, and, indeed, the craft was now spinning along faster than it had ever gone before. The repairs had improved the motors.
“Well, we are holding our own, at any rate,” Tom said when he and his chum had figured out how far they had come, how much distance yet remained to cover, and how much time they had to do it in. “I hoped we’d be a bit ahead of our schedule when we were near China, but we aren’t. Only just above even. But that’s better than being behind.”
“Are we over China now?” asked Ned, “looking down as if he expected to see a red laundry sign,” declared his chum, laughing.
“We shall be soon,” answered Tom seriously when his laugh was over. “We’ll have to land there, too, for more gas and oil. There’s where I arranged to take it on,” and he indicated a spot on the map where the eastern Turkestan city of Yarkand was located. “When we leave there we’ll head right across the great Chinese Empire, or rather, Republic, as it is now, over the lower edge of the Gobi Desert, perhaps, and then on to the Pacific.”
“Why, Tom!” Ned exclaimed with shining eyes, “we’ve almost won the race already, haven’t we?”
“Not by a long shot!” exclaimed Tom emphatically. “The hardest part of the trip is yet before us, and I fear the journey over the Pacific more than anything else!”
“Why?”
“On account of the storms—especially in the vicinity of the China coast and the Japanese islands. We may run into a typhoon.”
“Not so good,” murmured Ned, as he gazed at the map.
“Oh, well, we sha'n’t worry about that until we get there,” observed Tom more cheerfully. “We’re on our way, anyhow,” and indeed they were, with the wonderful machine throbbing her course through space.