“They’re all here, boys,” he shouted. “I’d know it without Roy’s chart.”
“A little strange,” answered Roy, “to go to London, turn around and leave England again without putting foot on the soil.”
“You may have a chance to stretch your legs at Acton,” broke in Ned. “We’ll be there nearly a half hour.”
“Think I can run over to the village?” continued Roy.
“What’d you want to do there?” asked Alan. “No soda water in England you know.”
“I thought I’d mail the folks a picture postal card,” laughed Roy. “That’ll be one way to prove we’ve been here.”
“But a better way to put in your time,” interrupted Ned again, “will be for you and Bob to take charge of the men who are to go back with us and get ’em aboard and in their staterooms. Buck,” he announced, “you get the new supplies and water aboard and store ’em away. Alan and I’ll be busy with the fuel and oil. If we’ve got any time left after that, we’ll stretch our legs and rest.”
“Hereford, by the chart,” was Roy’s only reply. “Stand by for Cheltenham and Oxford dead ahead.”
Buck, somewhat nervous over his coming pilot duty, was hastening to finish his report. When Roy announced Cheltenham a few minutes later, Buck hastily ended his copy, sealed and addressed it and sprang to Alan’s side by the wheel.
“The shore pilot is aboard, sir,” exclaimed Alan turning toward Ned and speaking with assumed dignity.
“Very good,” answered Ned. “Turn the ship over to him.”
Roy, continuing the joke, turned his land chart face down on the desk and arose with a smile, stretching his arms.
“Until we leave Acton at two o’clock,” was Ned’s sober reply.
“Bring her down to seven hundred feet,” came a sharp order from Buck.
All looked up in surprise and Ned even chuckled. It was apparent that the new pilot had taken charge in reality. Before Oxford was reached the shadowy east had formed itself into the cloud that always hangs over a great city. The moors and farms of west England had long since merged into the park like places and estates in which rose the country homes of wealth and the nobility. Even at 700 feet these fled beneath the speeding car until all detail was lost. Railway lines, vine-clad stations, the picturesque cots of rural hamlets were almost a blur. But they all meant one thing—London was near.