ad
of us who is calling out the _Daily Independent_. That's your father's
newspaper, too."

"It will be in there sure pop, Paul."

"Then I'm going to get a copy right now."

The two youths, who but a few moments before had come out of the broad
doors of the Clark Polytechnic Institute along with a noisy throng of
other students, paused when they reached the newsboy in question, and
the taller of the pair bought a newspaper which he shoved into an inner
pocket of his raincoat.

"We'll look at this in the car on our way home; a fellow can't do any
reading in a storm like this," said the purchaser. "Let's hurry up a
bit, Bob; I'm so eager to see what it says about that Derby that I can
hardly wait to get to the station. Say, just think of it--a race
around the world by air! Won't that be great?"

"I'll say so, Paul old boy! They ought to smash all existing records.
You know that a man named Mears made the circuit in thirty-five days
about seven years ago, and he had to depend on slow steam trains and
steamships, aided by a naphtha-launch."

"That's true, Bob. Now that we have planes we ought to do a lot
better. But the big oceans are the trouble for aircraft. The Atlantic
has been crossed by Alcock and Brown in a Vimy-Vickers biplane, and
also by our NC-4 flying-boat under the command of Lieutenant Read, and
by the big English dirigible R-34; but the Pacific, with its greater
breadth, has seemed so impossible that it has never been attempted."

"Why should it seem impossible?"

"Because they can't carry sufficient gasoline to cross the Pacific."

"But how about the islands?"

"The majority are not level enough to permit a landing, and others are
too widely scattered. I have made quite a study of transoceanic flight
since Harry Hawker and his partner, Grieve, made their unsuccessful
attempt last spring to cross the Atlantic in a Sopwith machine, and for
my part I can't see how this proposed Derby around the world can all be
done by air, when no machine has ever yet been able to hop the Pacific."

"Well, Paul, we'll soon be at the station out of this storm, and then
we can see what the paper says about it," was the philosophical
conclusion of his companion.

With that they hurried on down the street, bowing their heads to ward
off the sharp sleet as much as possible, while they gripped their
school-books under their arms. They were a splendid-looking pair of
young Americans, probably about eighteen y