Boy Scouts in an Airship | Page 8

for the purpose of "sobbing together," as they expressed
it. They had left their friends in San Francisco reluctantly because of
orders from home, and now they understood that they might have gone
with Ned and Jimmie if they had only explained to their parents the
purpose of the mission.
"I suppose," Frank Shaw said, at the end of a long pause in the
conversation, "I suppose Ned and the others are out over the Andes by
this time."
"No," replied Jack. "I heard from Jimmie by wire today, and they are
still in Frisco, and likely to remain there nearly a week longer."
"If the airship was only large enough!" sighed Harry.
"We might still get there in time!" Frank suggested, eagerly.
"The Nelson wouldn't carry us if we were there," Jack exclaimed, in a
disgusted tone. "I wish the Black Bear had wings! Say, wouldn't that be
a peach? We could run over to Paraguay and scare the life out of the
boys!"
"What good would it do if she had wings?" demanded Frank. "She is in
storage at Portland, Oregon."
"No," replied Harry Stevens, whose father, a noted maker of
automobiles, had presented the motor-boats to his son, "I ordered the
boats sent on here the day after we left the coast. We can take a trip up
the Hudson, anyway."
Jack walked thoughtfully around the room for a moment and then
turned back to the others, looking moodily out of a window.
"I've got it!" he shouted, slapping Frank on the back.
"I should say you had!" remarked Frank. "What do you take for it?"
"I say I've got an idea!" Jack explained, jumping up and down and
swinging his hands over his head. "A peach of an idea!"

"Does it hurt?" asked Harry.
"Oh, cut out that funny stuff!" Jack cried. "When will the two
motor-boats be here?"
Harry counted on the fingers of his left hand.
"We've been home two days," he said, "and we were four days getting
to Chicago. There we laid over a day, and came on here in twenty hours.
We are eight days from the Pacific coast. That right?"
"It seems to be."
"Well, then, it is seven days since I ordered the Black Bear and the
Wolf sent on here in a special express car. They ought to be here now."
"Then," shouted Jack, pulling Harry around the room, "we're all
right--fit as a brass band at a free lunch! Whoo-pee!"
"It must be hungry," Frank exclaimed, regarding Jack with seeming
terror. "Does it ever bite when it puts out these signals of distress?"
"Don't get too funny!" Jack warned.
"Then loosen up on this alleged idea!" Frank replied.
Jack rushed across the room and brought out an atlas of the world,
which he dumped on the floor and opened.
"Look here, fellows!" he said, squatting over the map of South America,
his chin almost on his knees.
"We're looking," grinned Frank. "What about it?"
"Here we are in New York," Jack went on. "Here they are in San
Francisco. Now, they've got to sail to Paraguay, which is just about
twice as far from San Francisco as is New York. Anyway, that's the
way it looks on the map."

"It is all of that distance," Harry put in.
"Well," Jack continued, "as I said before, here we are in New York,
with the mouth of the Amazon river about as far away as San Francisco,
perhaps a little farther."
"Well?" demanded Harry.
"I begin to see the point!" Frank admitted. "But will the folks stand for
it?"
"Mine will," Harry answered. "Dad didn't make the Black Bear to lie in
storage. He'll stand for it, all right."
"So will mine," Frank said, then. "I'll tell him I'll send him a lot of news
for his paper."
Frank's father was owner and editor of the Planet, one of the leading
morning newspapers in the big city, and it was always a fiction of the
boy's that he was going out in the interest of the paper when he
wandered off on a trip with the Boy Scouts.
"I'm afraid you can't make that work again," laughed Jack. "Ned says
that you sent only four postal cards and six letters back from Panama."
"Well, wasn't that going some?" asked Frank.
"Of course, only Ned says the postal cards carried the correspondence
for the Planet, and the letters carried requests for more money!"
"Anyway," Frank insisted, "Dad will stand for it. What is it?"
"Well," Jack went on, "I'm sure my Dad will let me go. He wants me to
go about all I can. Says it brightens a fellow to rub up against the rough
places of the world."
"There's rough corners enough in South America," laughed Harry.
"Now, let us