e of our plans."

"You'll have to change 'em to beat the _Golden Butterfly_," muttered
Fanning; "if only those drawings hadn't been lost we'd have had that
balancer, and it looks to me as if we might need it before we get to Cape
Charles."

"Why?"

"The wind's freshening. Not more than a half dozen of these aeroplanes
will venture up. Bother the luck, if it wasn't for the _Golden Butterfly_,
we'd have a clean sweep."

"This is only the first day," counseled Regina; "the points scored to-day
will not count for so very much. There's plenty of time."

"Humph," grumbled Fanning, and as this conversation had brought them up to
the _Silver Cobweb_, he broke it off to communicate his intelligence
concerning the Prescott aeroplane to Mortlake, who heard it with a
lowering brow.

Bang!

A bomb shot upward and exploded, in a cloud of thick yellow smoke, in
mid-air.

"The half-hour signal," cried Jimsy; "everything ready?"

"As ready as it ever will be," rejoined Peggy nervously fingering a stay
wire.

The navigators of the Nameless were still inside the shed. The doors were
still closed. Peggy had decided not to risk having the machine damaged by
the crowd by bringing it out before the very last moment. As the bomb
sounded Jimsy drew out his watch. He kept it in his hand awaiting the
elapse of the preliminary half-hour.

Outside, as Fanning had prophesied, there had been a great and sweeping
reduction in the number of aeroplanes that were to start. The puffy wind
had scared most of the entrants of the freak types and only five of the
more conventional kind of aircraft were on the starting line. The _Silver
Cobweb_ was among them.

Fanning was in the driver's seat. As a passenger he carried Regina
Mortlake. She looked very stunning in her lurid aviation costume, and her
handsome face was as calm as chiseled marble. Her nervousness only
displayed itself by a constant tapping of her gauntleted fingers.

Fanning finished oiling the motor and adjusting grease cups and timers,
and straightening up, glanced nervously about him. Still no sign of the
Nameless.

"I guess they've got scared off by the wind," he grinned to Mortlake, who,
with the elder Harding and several machinists, stood by the side of the
_Cobweb_.

"I doubt it," rejoined Mortlake; "it would take more than that to alarm
those girls. And just to think that all our trouble to out-maneuver them
has gone for nothing."

"You did a bad thing when you let