“Well, we’re off at last!” commented Andy, in a satisfied tone, when the course had been taken, and they were following directly after the fugitive air craft.

“And let’s hope we’ll come out of this adventure as luckily as we have on other occasions,” remarked sober Frank.

“Wonder if Perc happens to be looking this way right now,” Andy went on to say.  “Chances are, that he’s got his old field glass leveled, and is searching the heavens right along, in hopes of locating his lost machine.  And say, if he does glimpse this fine parade right now, can’t you see him turning green with envy to think of another glorious chance coming to the hated Bird boys.  Oh! my, oh! me! but it would be gall and wormwood to Perc.  Just as like as not he’d take a fit!”

But Frank was not giving any time to such thoughts as these.  More serious affairs engaged his attention.  When once he left the firm footing of the solid earth, and invaded the upper currents where up to lately man had never traveled, save in a drifting balloon, he always put levity aside, and paid strict attention to business.

The panorama below them was constantly changing, and the boys could not but admire the pictures thus presented to their gaze.  No matter how often one may go up a thousand feet or more above the earth, it is next to impossible to weary of the wonderful scenes that keep passing constantly in review as the buzzing motor keeps carrying the aeroplane along over plain, valley, hills, forests, rivers, and villages or towns that chance to lie in the route.

To Andy it was all somewhat in the nature of a grand picnic, for his nature was not one to contemplate peril at a distance.  Had he and Frank just come out for an hour’s spin he could not have shown more delight, as they went whirling through space, with that rival flier a mile or two ahead.

“Do you think we’re gaining on them?” asked Andy, after some time had elapsed, and the country below began to get unfamiliar, proving that they had now come beyond the range of any previous trip taken to the northward of Bloomsbury.

“I don’t know for sure,” replied his cousin.  “Sometimes I think we are, and then again I’m a little in doubt.  Suppose you get the glass out, and see what they’re doing, Andy?”

“Well, I’m a great one, forgetting all about that bully marine glass.”  As he said this Andy hastened to feel for the article in question, which was always kept handy, because there never could be any telling when they might want to use it in a hurry.

“Go slow; no use rocking the boat,” sang out the pilot, who was forever cautioning his companion with regard to quick motions when seated in such a delicately balanced contraption as a biplane.  “It’s a good thing that we’ve got that new fool-proof contrivance that Mr. Wright invented, on this machine right now, because only for that you’d be giving me more than a few scares when you swing from one side to the other so quickly.”