“You know he was doing splendidly when we left, and he has our telegrams by this time,” said Jess; “oh, Peggy, I’m so glad that the board of naval aviation said you could fly the Golden Butterfly.”

“Oh, weren’t they taken aback, though, at the idea?” chuckled Jimsy; “I thought that dignified old officer would fall out of his chair at the idea of a girl daring to run an aeroplane.  I’ll bet if there’d been anything in the rules about it, Peggy, they’d have barred you.”

“I think so, too,” laughed Peggy, “but, luckily, there wasn’t.  As Lieut.  Bradbury pointed out, it was a case of an emergency.  It isn’t as if I’d tried to ‘butt in,’ as you say, Jimsy.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t see why a girl shouldn’t run an aeroplane just as well as a boy.  You certainly showed that you could, Peggy, when you raced that train back in Nevada.”

“In years to come,” prophesied Peggy, “I dare say women as aviators will be as common as men.  I don’t see why not.  Ten years ago a woman who ran an automobile would have been laughed at, if not insulted.  But now, why lots of women run their own cars and nobody thinks of even turning his head.”

“Hear! hear!” cried Jimsy, “I declare I feel like a lone man at a suffragette meeting.”

“Then conduct yourself as if you were actually in that dangerous position,” laughed Peggy.

The girl’s spirits were rising now under the excitement of the night ride.  On the advice of Lieut.  Bradbury the party from Sandy Beach had kept closely to their rooms at the hotel all that day.  It was at the officer’s advice, too, that their shed had been labeled the Nameless.

“If Mortlake was, as I begin to think, concerned in these attacks on you,” the officer had said, “I think it would be advisable not to appear any more than necessary.  Let him think that you are out of the race.”

Accordingly, the Butterfly had been transported secretly and placed in her shed at night.  The secret had been well guarded and, as we know, neither Mortlake nor Fanning Harding had even an inkling that the Prescott machine was far—­very far from being out of the race.

On and on through the night throbbed the Golden Butterfly, making fast time.  At last they decided that it was time to return.  The object of the trip, to see that all was in running order, had been accomplished.  Nothing remained to do now but to wait for the morrow and what it would bring forth.  The nature of the tests had been carefully guarded, and not one of the contestants knew anything about what they were to be till the hour came at which they would be announced from the judges’ boat.

Suddenly, as they neared the environs of Hampton and the glare of electric lights could be seen on the sky, Jimsy gave a cry and pointed down below.  They were flying pretty low, and in a road beneath them they could see an automobile.  Its headlights shone brightly but it had stopped.  All at once a sharp shout for help winged upward.