The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing | Page 6

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 had won the race to the top of the neighboring mountain, during Old Home Week at Bloomsbury.
And every day he was thinking more and more of what strange things the future might have in store for him, if he ever started on that exploring venture.
CHAPTER III.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE BIRD BOYS.
"How about coming over tonight?" asked Frank, as the boys halted at the gate of Dr. Bird's place, where Andy had gone to get his wheel, since he lived some little distance away.
"I'd like to first rate, Frank, because there are some things I want to talk over with you. But I promised Colonel Josiah to get at his books tonight and straighten them out. It'll take me all evening, I reckon."
"Oh, well," remarked Frank, "see you in the morning anyway. This breeze will have worn itself out