"
"Besides," added Lieutenant Beverly, "none of us is likely to try to
repeat the little flight we just carried through. We feel as if we can
rest on our well earned laurels."
"And it'll be some time, I firmly believe," said Mr. Raymond, "before
your wonderful feat is duplicated, or even approached." But then, of
course, he could not foresee how even before the peace treaty had been
signed a number of ambitious aviators would actually cross the Atlantic,
one crew in a huge heavier-than-air machine, another in an American
seaplane, and still a third aboard a mighty dirigible, making the
passages with but a day or so intervening between flights.
When a certain steamship left New York harbor one morning soon afterwards
three pairs of eyes took a parting look through a porthole in their
united stateroom at the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island.
Of course the occupants of the stateroom were Tom and Jack and Colin.
They had managed to interest the big-hearted captain in their scheme.
He knew that he must not appear to be connected with such an escapade;
but such was his admiration for their wonderful achievement, as well as
his friendship for Lieutenant Beverly, that he readily consented to
help them.
"And so here we are," Jack observed, after they had passed out from Sandy
Hook and were heading across toward troubled Europe, "going back to duty,
before our leave of absence will have expired, and the three weeks
already nearly half over.
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