“And if they fail to get back on time they get only five thousand dollars for the return trip.”
“I’ll do better than that,” added the editor. “I have with me our cashier’s check for $10,000 payable to the Airship Boys. The above terms are agreeable to me. If they are satisfactory to the young men, I’ll pay over the check now, unconditionally. It will have been earned if a start is made in good faith.”
“We’ll sign the contract and we’ll start not only in good faith but in good hope. But we’ll call for our money on the morning of June 23, and,” he added, his eyes twinkling, “when you may as well have a check for sixty thousand dollars ready. We’ll earn it.”
While Major Honeywell’s secretary prepared a duplicate copy of the memorandum contract Alan raised another point:
“Has any one figured where and how we are to deliver your reporters, their copy, the photographer and his pictures? Remember, it will be about two o’clock in the morning.”
“Can’t you drop the manuscript and the pictures somewhere out in the bay near the _Herald_ boat if it shows prearranged signals?” asked the editor.
“Why not show the same signals on the _Herald_ building?” asked Bob. “Our customary green diamond?”
“But we can’t drop the reporters,” laughed Ned.
“If you can land our stories and our pictures on the _Herald_ roof,” exclaimed the editor with new interest, “you may dump the reporters in the Jersey flats and let ’em swim.”
“We’ll come over and look at the roof,” exclaimed Ned smiling. “The men can take a chance with us.”
“Now,” began the editor in a new tone, “with these business details out of the way, I want to ask something. I wish you’d explain to me how you are going to travel one hundred and eighty miles an hour.”
“To confess the truth,” answered Ned promptly, “it’ll be two hundred miles an hour. One hundred and eighty is our minimum.”
“This rate of two hundred miles an hour,” explained Ned, “involves no new ideas. That is the natural evolution from the sixty mile an hour rate due to a better built machine and more powerful engines. All aeroplanes will reach that speed in time just as railway trains go faster with more powerful engines, heavier road beds, better tracks and more daring engineers. But the _Ocean Flyer_ has possibilities far beyond two hundred miles an hour—theoretically at least.”