“About twenty miles south of here,” responded the captain. Then turning to the operator he asked, “Have you tried to get in communication with the Sky Eagle again?”
“Yes, sir, but with no success. Looks as if her wireless had gone out of business. That message came in more than an hour ago. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Great guns, boys, this is serious!” exclaimed the captain in an agitated voice. “Who knows what may have happened to those poor fellows! I must try to get hold of them, somehow. But just how I don’t know.”
“There’s Alvin’s dirigible on the grounds,” suggested the operator. “Maybe he’d go.”
“I’ll try him,” declared the captain. “It’s in the cause of common humanity. I should think he’d go.”
But Lester Alvin, the owner of the Cloud Scooter, declared he had not enough gasolene to make the trip. Two other dirigible operators were appealed to, but both of them had excuses of one sort or another to offer. The captain hastened back to the wireless hut where he had left the boys.
“Any news yet?” he asked anxiously of Hutchings the operator.
“I can’t get in touch with them at all,” he said. “I can’t even raise a station that’s seen them passing over.”
The captain passed a bewildered hand across his forehead.
“What under the heavens are we to do?” he said. “I’ve appealed to those dirigible fellows in vain. They’ve all got one excuse or another to offer. I guess, though, the main trouble with them is ‘cold feet’ to put it into plain English.”
“And in the meantime those poor fellows on the Sky Eagle may be drifting helplessly over the ocean,” said Jack.
“Yes, and the worst of it is that their wireless appears to be out of order. If that was working they could summon help from some ship. But as it is----”
The captain broke off despairingly. He gazed up at the sky as if seeking inspiration there and then down at the ground. But he remained as perplexed as before.
In the meantime Jack and his companions had been holding an eager consultation. As the captain turned to Hutchings for the twentieth time with a demand to know if he had heard anything yet, Jack stepped forward.
“Captain,” he said, “I guess that we can help you out.”
“That we will go out on a hunt for the Sky Eagle.”