The Boy Aviators' Flight for a Fortune   By: John Henry Goldfrap (1879-1917)

THE BOY AVIATORS' FLIGHT FOR A FORTUNE

BY CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON

AUTHOR OF "THE BOY AVIATORS," "DREADNOUGHT BOYS," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES L. WRENN

NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1912, BY HURST & COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. On Brig Island 5 II. The Wireless 22 III. A Night Alarm 36 IV. Cut Adrift 45 V. Adventures on the Hulk 56 VI. Harry Meets an Old Friend 66 VII. A Puzzling Problem 80 VIII. The Derelict Destroyer 89 IX. The Flight of the "Sea Eagle" 97 X. "C. Q. D.!" 112 XI. "Good Luck!" 121 XII. Through the Night 129 XIII. A Twentieth Century Rescue 137 XIV. Ben's Plan Stolen 148 XV. What Happened Ashore 158 XVI. Off on the "Air Route" 170 XVII. An Aerial Ambulance 180 XVIII. An Errand of Mercy 189 XIX. Plumbo Found Wanting 199 XX. Frank's Battle 209 XXI. A Rascally Trick 219 XXII. Reunited! 230 XXIII. Off Once More 237 XXIV. A Struggle for Life 246 XXV. A Race to Cloudland 253 XXVI. The Boy Aviators' Pluck 264 XXVII. Captured by Aeroplane 275

THE BOY AVIATORS' FLIGHT FOR A FORTUNE

CHAPTER I. ON BRIG ISLAND.

The sharp bow of Zenas Daniels' green and red dory grazed the yellow beach on the west shore of Brig Island, a wooded patch of land lying about a mile off the Maine Shore in the vicinity of Casco Bay. His son Zeb, a lumbering, uncouth looking lad of about eighteen, with a pronounced squint, leaped from the craft as it was beached, and seized hold of the frayed painter preparatory to dragging her farther up the beach.

In the meantime Zenas himself, brown and hatchetlike of face, and lean of figure with a tuft of gray whisker on his sharp chin, like an old fashioned knocker on a mahogany door gathered up a pile of lobster pots from the stern of the dory and shouldered them. A few lay loose, and those he flung out on the beach.

These last Zeb gathered up, and as his father stepped out of the dory the pair began trudging up the steeply sloping beach, toward the woods which rimmed the islet almost to the water's edge. All this, seemingly, in defiance of a staring sign which faced them, for on it was printed in letters visible quite a distance off:

PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING!