The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing | Page 2

when he found himself face to face with the boy he detested so
thoroughly. They had never as yet actually come to blows; but Puss
believed that his muscular powers were far superior to those of his
more slender rival, and just now he was in a particularly bitter frame of
mind.
"Oh! so you're there, are you?" he sneered "I was just telling your good
friend Larry here that I considered you a greatly overrated substitute
pitcher; and that luck had as much to do with our winning that game
today as anything you did."
Frank Bird laughed in his face.
"Sure," he declared, cheerily. "I was a mighty small factor in the
victory, for I only played in one short inning. If I'd faced those hard
hitters of Cranford nine times I reckon it'd be hard to tell what they'd
have done to my poor inshoots and curves."
"But you held them in that inning, Frank, you know you did!" cried
Larry.
"Mere accident, my boy. Happened to be the weak end of their batting
list!" observed Frank, as if determined to agree with his enemy, and
thus spike his guns.

"Is that so?" demanded "Elephant" Small, who did not happen to be on
the nine, because of his customary slow ways. "Perhaps you'll be
saying that dandy two-bagger you whanged out, that brought in the
winning run, was also an accident?"
"Well, I must have just shut my eyes, and struck. I seem to remember
hearing a sound like a shot, and then they all yelled to me to run; so I
did, going on to second in time to see Peterkin gallop home," and Frank
looked as sober as a judge as he said this. The others saw the joke,
however, and, led by Larry, burst out into a laugh that made Puss and
his loyal backers scowl.
"If that bingle was an accident, don't we wish we had a few more
players who could shut their eyes and meet Frazer's terrible speed balls
and curves in the same way!" one fellow exclaimed.
"So say we all of us!" another cried.
Puss realized that the majority on board the Siren were against him. But
he was not given to taking water; even his enemies, and he had many in
Bloomsbury, could hardly say that Puss was lacking in a certain kind of
grit; while stubbornness he possessed in abundance.
So he just shut his white teeth hard together, and looked scowlingly
around the bunch of fellows. And many of them felt a little chill when
those cold gray eyes rested upon them; for they knew of old what
happened when Puss Carberry made up his mind to mark a boy for
future attention.
Frank still stood there by the side of the boat, smiling. Perhaps his very
apparent unconcern served to make the other still more angry. There
had been bad blood between these two lads for a long time, and more
than once it threatened an eruption, which somehow or other had up to
now been stayed.
Although some weeks had passed since the much-talked-of race
between the rival aeroplanes, piloted by these two boys, in which Frank
took his little craft up to the lofty summit of Old Thunder Top ahead of

Puss in his biplane, as narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled
"The Bird Boys; or, The Young Sky Pilot's First Air Voyage," the latter
had never ceased to feel ugly over his defeat.
As usual he had what he considered a good excuse for his arriving
second; but few persons ever knew how Puss and his helper Sandy had
tried to injure Frank's airship when it was directly beneath them, by
deliberately dropping a sand bag, taken along, singularly enough, as
"ballast," but with this very idea in view.
"Seems to me you've gotten the big head ever since you happened to
drop on that rocky plateau on top of the mountain just three little
seconds ahead of me, Frank Bird!" he said, with a steely glitter in his
eyes that those who knew him best understood to mean coming trouble.
"Oh! I hope not, Puss," replied the other, with a smile. "I give you my
word my hat fits me just as comfortably as ever. It was a close race, and
the one who got there first hadn't much to crow about, for a fact. We
happened to be lucky not to have any trouble with our new little
Kinkaid engine, that was all."
"Huh!" grunted his cousin Andy, shaking his head, and scowling at
Puss in turn. "But we had plenty of other sorts of trouble, all the same,
sand bags full of it, in fact. They just rained down on us; but then Frank
knows how to check