“Dere she is, massa.”

Quatty’s dark figure standing up in the canoe was outlined against the deep ultramarine blue of the night sky as he pointed to an indistinct blur on the horizon.

“She” both the boys instantly realized with a thrill was the mound-builders’ island on which the Golden Eagle II had been left. They had been paddling hard all night and sometimes poling where the maze of streams they followed shallowed to a mere puddle. With the sudden nearing of their goal a new fear was borne in upon them.

Would the aeroplane be there? Or had the same mysterious forces that held the Boy Aviators captive wrecked their ship, too?

Silently—after the first flush of the excitement at Quatty’s having guided them right through a wilderness that it seemed impossible to traverse except at random—the boys paddled on. Their minds were both busy with the same question. What would they find when they got there? Perhaps after all their errand would prove to be in vain.

Lathrop was the first to voice the apprehension, they both felt.

“Suppose the Golden Eagle II is gone?” he asked in a low voice.

“Then we will hunt up the Tarantula, get a detachment of bluejackets and clean out the Everglades before we’ll give up the search,” was the determined reply of the young reporter. Billy was rising to the emergency.

The sun had already risen when the outlines of the distant island became visible in detail and Billy, after a long and careful scrutiny through the glasses, declared he could see something that might or might not be the Golden Eagle II perched on its summit. This was cheering news and put new strength into the paddlers’ flagging arms. From that time on till they reached the island and found that all was well the boys did not speak a word, but put all their strength into the work of urging the boats through the water. It was aggravating work too, for at times they would be only half a mile from the island and then they would find that they were compelled to follow another watery path that took them a couple of miles away from their destination. At last, however, the keels of the little flotilla grated on the island and Billy and Lathrop ran up the well-worn trail leading to the summit.

Their joy at finding the air-ship intact may be imagined. It was better luck than they had dared to hope for. Speed was the main thing now and while they might have reached the island of the formula stealers by boat the journey there and back to the coast again by water would have been a tedious one and might indeed, by its very length, have defeated their purpose.

Lathrop’s first care was to examine the gasolene supply. He found to his satisfaction that the tank was more than half full and he immediately dumped into it the contents of the two five-gallon cans of reserve supply that the boys had brought along and which were stored under the transom.

For an hour or more the boy went over the machine carefully, striving to master to the minutest detail its working parts. Lathrop was an aviator and next to the boys, perhaps was as skilled a navigator of aerial craft as the old school in New York had turned out, but he was a little dubious about his ability to run the Golden Eagle II. However, it had to be done and after giving Billy careful instructions about keeping the oil cups filled and seeing to it that the condenser was in constant working order, Lathrop decided that things were about ready for his experimental flight in the Chester boys’ big aeroplane.

“And to think that in White Plains I’d have given my head to see it and here I am going to run her,” he could not help saying to himself as he stepped back and gave a final look over the craft.

Under Lathrop’s direction the aeroplane was wheeled back to the furthest boundary of the top of the mound as he did not want to take chances on not securing a good running start. Lathrop knew that aeroplanes are like horses, they will go well for the man who is used to them under almost any condition; but when a new hand takes control accidents are likely to happen unless the greatest care is used. As he well realized he knew nothing of the habits of the Golden Eagle II, which was a far bigger aeroplane than he had ever run or in fact ever seen.

The boy’s heart beat a little faster as he clambered into the pilot section of the chassis and adjured Billy for the last time to look well to the engine.

“That’s all right,” Billy anxiously assured him, “I’m as good an engineer as Harry himself, or will be,” he added.

“Don’t holler till you’re out of the wood,” said Lathrop, “and obey orders.”

It is curious how circumstances will alter cases. Billy Barnes, by virtue of his greater age and knowledge of the world was easily Lathrop’s leader, ordinarily. Now, however, when Billy was about to enter upon a duty of which he knew nothing and the other boy a whole lot, their positions were readjusted and it was Lathrop who became the leading spirit.

Quatty, it had been agreed, was to be left behind, and was to make his way back to the coast with the canoes as soon as possible and apprise the Tarantula people of what had occurred. He silently watched the boys’ preparations with interest from a safe distance.

“Now, then, crank her up,” shouted Lathrop, as he threw in the spark on the control wheel and waited patiently for results as Billy turned and sweated at the self-starting apparatus.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, as there was no answering explosion from the engine.

“I don’t know,” stammered Billy wiping his brow, “there doesn’t seem to be anything doing, does there?”

“What can be the matter?” exclaimed Lathrop, throwing out the switch and coming aft.

He examined the spark plugs in turn and found that they were sparking in perfect order. Next came an inspection of the carburettor—that, too, was in good trim. Evidently the reason for the failure to start was not there. Lathrop was puzzled, he had never known an engine to behave in such a mystifying way before. He went over it again part by part, carefully, and cranked it and rocked it till his arms were ready to drop off.

Suddenly an idea struck him—not so much for the reasonableness of it, but because he had examined about every other likely cause of failure to start.

“Well, Billy, you are a wonder,” he exclaimed in a vexed tone, when to his surprise he found that what he tried in desperation proved correct.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Billy cheerfully.

“Why you only forgot to open the gasolene valve, that’s all.”

For the first and last time in his life the reporter was fairly taken back.

“Well, Lathrop, I will admit that I am a first-class, blown-in-the-bottle chump,” he exclaimed contritely. The next cranking proved successful and after the engines had settled down to a quiet easy purr, Lathrop with a warning cry of:

“Hold tight, I’m going to throw in the clutch!” started the big aeroplane on its flight of rescue.

With a swift, wobbling motion that threw Billy from side to side of the car the Golden Eagle II, under the direction of her unskilled pilot, skidded across the top of the mound-builders’ island while Quatty waved his arm in farewell.

Unaccustomed as he was to the Golden Eagle II, Lathrop made his first mistake when he tried to raise her after too short a run. To his despair and amazement she refused to rise when he raised his upward planes. They were traveling over the ground at a rapid speed, now with the two big propellers threshing the air at a rate of 1200 revolutions a minute; the roar of the exhaust was like the discharge of a score of gatling guns.

Lathrop set his teeth desperately and jerked the planes at an even acuter angle in his effort to get her to rise. They were only a few yards from the edge of the mound now and if she refused to rise by the time they reached it they would be inevitably dashed down to death in the ruins of the big sky-skimmer. With that desperate determination that comes in the face of crucial emergency, Lathrop threw in another speed on the engine and they attained a velocity of 1500 revolutions a minute.

“I’ll make her rise or bust,” he said grimly to himself.

But the end he feared did not come; under the added impetus of her increased speed and the acute angle at which the boy had set the rising planes the Golden Eagle II shot into the air, as abruptly as a sky-rocket, as she reached the edge of the mound. The result for an instant, however, threatened to be almost as serious as if she had gone over the edge without rising.

In his excitement Lathrop had set the rising planes at such an abrupt angle that when the ship shot up she reared like a horse, hurling Billy Barnes back among the engines and almost overboard and causing Lathrop to let go of his steering wheel for the fragment of a second to grasp a stanchion. At the same instant the aeroplane, left unguided for a second, gave a sickening plunge sideways, like a wounded hawk. Lathrop in his agitation seized the wheel and gave it a twist that brought her round, it is true, but as her starboard propeller was working in direct opposition to the curve he wished her to describe, he almost twisted her rudder off and made her careen at just as alarming an angle in the opposite direction.

To Billy it looked as if they were gone but Lathrop, who was fast learning the peculiarities of the craft he had under his control, managed by a skillful manipulation to right her and the next minute with her propellers beating the air at top speed the big craft dashed forward as steadily as an ocean liner. It had been a narrow escape, though, and taught Lathrop something about navigating a twin screw air-ship. In a craft of this kind, in a maneuver executed to port, the course of the ship is bound to receive a backward pull from the starboard propeller and vice versa. It is necessary for the operator, then to swing in an easy curve to avoid pulling his steering gear out by the roots and being dashed to death.

“That’s only the overture,” cried Lathrop, exhilarated by the rapid motion as they rushed toward the island, “wait for the big show.”