The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing | Page 6

him!"
The idea of that proverbial slow coach of an Elephant ever doing
anything on the spur of the moment was really too much for the rest of
the boys and a general roar went up. "Don't bother your heads about me,
fellows," remarked Frank, quietly, when the laughter had ceased again.

"That was just about the kind of treatment I should have expected to get
from Puss Carberry. Still, I'm not sorry I did it. Life would seem very
tame without that schemer around to try and liven things up for me. But
I hardly expected him to accuse me of pushing him in when all I did
was to step aside and avoid a blow at his hands. Forget it, please."
He walked off with his cousin Andy, who had been boiling over at the
time the rescued Puss made his astonishing accusation.
"Wouldn't that jar you some now?" remarked Andy, after his customary
fashion.
"I suppose you're referring to the way Puss turned on me after I went
and got my baseball suit wet just to give him a helping hand?" laughed
Frank, good naturedly. "Oh, I don't bear any malice. Perhaps he was
still a little stunned by that knock I gave him. But I thought he was
going to get his arms around my neck, you see, and then it would be all
up with us both. It worked, too, for he was as limp as a dishrag from
that time on. Remember it, Andy, in case you ever jump over after
Puss."
"Me after that snake? Why, hang it, I'd see him in Guinea before I'd
ever lift a hand to save him! I tell you I'd--I'd--" stammered the
indignant Andy.
"I don't believe it of you," declared his cousin, quickly. "You may think
you'd stand by and see him drown, but that's all gammon. I know you
too well to believe you're half as vindictive as you try to make out. But
did you hear what he said about going down there to South America,
visiting a plantation his mother partly owns and taking his biplane
along with him?"
Andy was all excitement now.
"Sure I did," he said. "And ten to one he learned somehow that we
thought of going down in that region for another purpose. It would be
just like Puss and that sneak of a Sandy Hollingshead to try and beat us
out. That fellow wouldn't mind a trip to the other end of the world if he

thought he could get your goat, Frank. He hates you like poison. Pity
you didn't feel a cramp just when you were swimming to him--not
enough to endanger your own life, you see, but sort of make you stop
short."
"Shame on you, Andy," remarked Frank. "I hope I'll always carry
myself so that I won't be afraid to look at myself in a glass. But what do
you know about that place--didn't he call it a cocoa plantation or
something of the kind?"
"Yes," replied the other moodily; "I was told that his mother owned
two-thirds of some such place along the Amazon or somewhere down
there. But let them go. It's a tremendous big country and there isn't the
least danger that we'll ever butt into them, if we should decide to take a
run down."
"Still," observed the taller lad, thoughtfully, "you never can know. I've
heard travelers say that sometimes the world seems to be very small;
when you meet your next door neighbor on the top of some Swiss
mountain. Puss may know nothing about your plans and this is perhaps
only a coincidence, as they say. Since he has had such poor luck getting
to the top of our mountains around here he wants to try his hand on
those poor South American Andes."
Andy's father had been a professor in one of the colleges, who, having
taken up aeronautics, had made many balloon voyages in quest of
scientific information, so that his name had become quite famous. Then,
about a year before, he had been lost when attempting to solve the air
currents on the Panama Isthmus, where the government had thirty
thousand laborers digging the big ditch.
Nothing had ever been heard of the professor from the day he started
from the Atlantic side of the isthmus, intending to cross the mountains
and land on the Pacific beach. And it was becoming a positive mania in
the mind of Andy, who lived with his guardian, Colonel Josiah
Whympers, to some day go down there and follow in the track of his
lost father, in the hope of discovering his sad fate.

It was with this idea in mind that he had united his forces with Frank's
inventive genius and helped build the monoplane with which they