He even decided to mention this fact to his cousin, after this voyage was concluded.  It loomed up as large as the Rock of Gibralter just then, even as a dream may at the moment of awaking, but which later on begins to lose its realistic effect until it seems next door to silly.

“They don’t show the least sign of changing their course, do they, Frank?” Andy remarked after another spell of time had passed.

“Not that you could notice,” replied the other, composedly.

Andy derived more or less comfort from this way his chum had of keeping his head even under the most trying conditions.  When his own nerves were fairly quivering with excitement, it always steadied Andy to turn and see that Frank was as cool and calm as though nothing were amiss.  More than a few times in the past it had caused the more hot-headed Bird boy to conquer his own weakness, and do himself credit in some difficult feat that became necessary.  Example is a splendid thing to lead any boy along safe roads.  Words may be forgotten in the trying moment; but when he actually sees the thing done before his very eyes, it is indelibly impressed upon his mind.

“About how long will it be before we get there?” Andy asked again; for he was forever wanting to know, when he had any misgivings about his own capacity for reaching a reasonable conclusion.

“Do you mean before we leave the land, and commence our voyage across the lake?” Frank inquired.

“Yes, that’s it—­more than half an hour, at the speed we’re going now?” continued the other.

“Just about, I should say,” Frank replied, after carefully measuring distances with his eye.  “We are up pretty high, and can cover a tremendous range, you know, so we first glimpsed the lake when we were a long ways off.  It may be all of forty miles away right now; and as we must be clipping along at the rate of eighty, with the breeze favorable behind us, why, half an hour ought to see us there.”

Andy fell silent again.

Many times did his eyes travel from the distant water to the earth below them; and then follow this up with an uneasy stare at the other aeroplane that was flying along far ahead of them.  The whole solution of the problem of course lay in the hands of the man who controlled the destinies of that stolen biplane.  Would he really have the nerve to attempt a flight across that great body of fresh water, aiming to land on foreign shores, from which he could not easily be extradited?

Frank seemed to think that such was undoubtedly the intention of Casper Blue, the little man who had been actor, aviator, and yeggman in turn, during the course of his adventurous life.

He had already proven beyond any doubt that he was a capable airman, even though he did have a crippled arm.  Never had the Bird boys seen an aeroplane handled with more extraordinary skill and dash than was the one that had been stolen from the hangar of Percy Carberry.