them seemed to be of one opinion: that the
dreadful crash had come from that particular quarter.

Now and then one of them would call out or give the Wolf signal, just
to inform the others where he happened to be. In this manner some
ten minutes went by and Hugh was thinking that the explosion must
have been much further away than any of them had suspected at the
time, when Bud was heard giving tongue.

Bud, when excited, always broke loose and allowed himself free rein.

"Come this way, boys!" he was shouting gleefully. "I've run the
old meteor to earth. My stars! what a terrible hole she did make!
Must be as big as a house!"

CHAPTER VIII

UNCLE SAM'S FLYING SQUADRON

"_How---oo---ooo_!"

Ralph gave the long-drawn cry of the timber wolf as he hurried in the
direction of Bud's shouts. Hugh speedily joined him, coming from
some side quarter, and the pair were soon closing in on the other scout.

They found Bud clinging to a shattered sapling and staring down into
a gaping aperture that looked big enough for the excavation of a church
cellar. All around were evidences of a most tremendous explosion or
upheaval, some trees being actually shattered and others leaning over
as though ready to fall.

"Talk to me about your meteors," burst out the wondering Bud as he
saw the others coming along, "I hope to goodness one of them never
drops down on our roof at home. Just looky here what it did to the
poor old earth! That sky traveler's as big as the parsonage, I
should think."

Hugh turned to Ralph.

"No doubt about what happened now, is there?" he asked.

"Well, I should say not," came the answer, as Ralph stared down
into the hole.

"Must be some new sort of explosive they're experimenting with,"
added the patrol leader seriously; "and to look at that gap you'd
believe it beats dynamite all hollow. Drop a bomb made of that stuff
on a fort, and goodby to the whole business."

"W---what's that?" exclaimed the wondering Bud. "Do you mean to
tell me that it wasn't a meteor that made all that racket the last
two nights?"

"So far as I know," Hugh told him, "when a meteor drops down, it
buries itself in the earth and gradually cools off, for it's been
made almost red-hot by passing so swiftly through space. But it
doesn't, as a rule, burst and tear a horrible slash in the ground
like this."

"Then what made it, Hugh?" asked the other, evidently puzzled.

"A dropped bomb!"

"A bomb, you say