When he had seen to it that the motors were working well under the care of Peltok, Brinkley and Hartman, Tom let the linguistic foreigner take the controls while he and Ned went to their stateroom, which they shared in common, to go over the route in detail.
“This is going to be our route, Ned,” said Tom, as he laid a large map on the table and pointed to a red line approximately running along the fortieth degree of north latitude. “We’ll cruise due east from where we started, bearing a bit south, and head for the Azores.”
“Going to land there?”
“Not unless we have to,” said Tom. “We’re going to keep moving all the while.”
“At the rate of two hundred and fifty miles an hour,” said Ned, “we can——”
“We can’t keep up a speed of two fifty per hour for more than a little stretch at a time,” interrupted Tom. “In fact, I don’t expect to reach that rate for another day. It would rack my engines to pieces to maintain it for any length of time. I can do it, but I’m going to save that burst of speed for emergencies. No, if we can average a hundred miles an hour in the air we’ll be doing well. And when we have to land and taxi along, or when we have to go as a boat, we won’t do that, of course.”
“Where do you go from the Azores?” asked Ned.
“We don’t exactly go to the Azores Islands,” corrected Tom. “We’ll fly above them if I hit the right route. From there we head for Spain, move along across the Mediterranean and over the northern part of Turkey and then across China. We may land in the Philippines before we complete the trip across the Pacific.”
“And then from there you’ll head for San Francisco I take it?” asked Ned.
“That’s the idea. You know, don’t you, that I had the Airline Express sent on to ’Frisco to be held in readiness there?”