Do you think we'll have to do any
vol-planing, Tom?"

"Hard to say, but it's not dangerous when there's no wind. All
right, Garret. Start her off."

The engineer whirled the big wooden, built-up propeller, and with a
rattle and roar of the motor, effectually drowning any but the
loudest shouts, the BUTTERFLY was ready for her flight. Tom let the
engine warm up a bit before calling to his friends to let go, and
then, when he had thrown the gasolene lever forward, he shouted a
good-by and cried:

"All right! Let go!"

Forward, like a hound from the leash, sprang the little monoplane.
It ran perhaps for five hundred feet, and then, with a tilting of
the wings, to set the air currents against them, it sprang into the
air.

"We're off!" cried Mr. Damon, waving his hand to those on the ground
below.

"Yes, we're off," murmured Tom. "Now for the Quaker City!"

He had mapped out a route for himself the night before, and now,
picking out the land-marks, he laid as straight a course as possible
for Philadelphia.

The sensation of flying along, two thousand feet high, in a machine
almost as frail as a canoe, was not new to Tom. It was, in a degree,
to Mr. Damon, for, though the latter had made frequent trips in the
large airship, this mode of locomotion, as if he was on the back of
some bird, was much different. Still, after the first surprise, he
got used to it.

"Bless my finger ring!" he exclaimed, "I like it!"

"I thought you would," said Tom, in a shout, and he adjusted the oil
feed to send more lubricant into the cylinders.

The earth stretched out below them, like some vari-colored relief
map, but they could not stop to admire any particular spot long, for
they were flying fast, and were beyond a scene almost as quickly as
they had a glimpse of it.

"How long will it take us?" yelled Mr. Damon into Tom's ear.

"I hope to do it in three hours," shouted back the young inventor.

"What! Why it takes the train over five hours."

"Yes, I know, but we're going direct, and it's only about two
hundred and fifty miles. That's only about eighty an hour. We're
doing seventy-five now, and I haven't let her out yet."

"She goes faster than the RED CLOUD," cried Mr. Damon.

Tom nodded. It was hard work to talk in that rush of air. For an
hour they shot along, their speed gradually increasing. Tom called
out the names of the larger places they passed over. He was now
doing better than eighty an hour as the gage sho