blet, there to work out the route
and schedule.

It was no easy task. In the first place, they wished the route to be
as close to the equator at all times as possible, so that their line of
travel would approximate in distance the world's estimated
circumference of 24,899 miles. In the second place, for stops they
must choose cities or towns with either established landing-fields, or
with grounds level enough for this purpose. In the third place, these
airports must be so divided that they would not have to be visited
during the hours of darkness, for few if any of them would be likely to
have efficient enough lighting systems to make night landings safe.

Within fifteen minutes the boys had the long table in front of them
literally covered with geographies, atlases, loose maps, and
encyclopaedias. Paul even brought up a globe as large as a pumpkin,
while Bob was not content until he had secured a score of back numbers
of travel magazines. Into this divers collection of diagrams and
reading matter they dove with an avidity which would have surprised the
teachers they had when they were in grammar school, if they could have
seen them. It soon became evident that they would not only need a
route and schedule to make their journey successful, but also an
enormous amount of general information about the countries they would
pass over.

"We'll have to study trade winds, oceanic storm conditions,
temperatures, inhabitants, topography, and so forth, and so forth,"
drawled Tom Meeks. "Say, fellows, I feel like kicking myself to think
I didn't study my geography more and shoot paper-wads less, when I was
a kid at school."

"We'll have to do a lot of cramming, that's sure," averred John; "but
we have several months for that. Just now we want to jump into this
route and schedule."

They made up several tentative routes, only to discard them. Finally,
after several hours' work, they had one which everybody seemed to agree
was the best that could be picked out. With the schedule, which was
figured on the basis of 120 miles an hour airplane speed, the draft
looked like this:

_Miles Airport Arrive Leave_
---- PANAMA ------------ 1:00p 20th
1672 Georgetown 5:30a 21st 7:30a 21st
1154 Para 6:00p 21st 9:00p 21st
2402 Freetown 6:15p 22d 9:15p 22d
1980 Kuka 1:00p 23d 8:0