off the short runway and over the hangar.

“If he gets a ‘dead stick’ here,” Larry mused, “it will be just too bad!”

He had no trouble lifting the craft and flying for seconds just above the ground to get flying speed after the take-off, then giving it full gun and roaring up at a safe angle to clear the obstruction.

“We’re off!” exulted Dick.

They were—off on an adventure that was to start with a mad race and terminate—in smoke!

Down the backbone of Long Island, not very high, they flew. The farms, landscaped estates and straight roads of the central zone were in striking contrast to the bay and inlet dented North Shore with its fleets of small boats, its fishing hamlets, rolling hills and curving motor drives and the seaside with its beach resorts, yellow-brown sand and tall marsh grass clustered between crab-infested salt water channels.

Passing over the fashionable Summer homes of wealthy people at Southampton, they held the course until Montauk Point light was to the left of the airplane, then Jeff swung in a wide circle out over the desolate sand dunes, the ooze and waving eel-grass of marshes and the tossing combers of the surf.

“There’s the hydroplane!” Dick, leaning over the left side, made a pointing gesture. Larry, watching seaward, had not been looking in the right direction. Sandy, alert to pass signals, touched Jeff and received a nod from the pilot.

The first step of the plan was taken. They had made contact with the small, speedy craft which, on a later signal that they had “picked up” the incoming yacht, would speed out to sea to meet her.

“Now we’ll climb!” decided Sandy.

Climb they did, until the sea dropped down to a gray-green, flat expanse and only the powerful binoculars Larry was using could pick out the cruising hydroplane slowly verging away from the shore in an apparently aimless voyage.

“This isn’t such a bad scheme, at that,” Dick concluded mentally. “If there should be anybody on the lookout—robbers or somebody who wants to see what’s going on—no one will see any connection between us passing here and then climbing to get a good wind for a run down the coast toward Maine, and a hydroplane that’s acting as if it had some engine trouble.”

Higher and 

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