its way toward him.

"Anyway," he added to himself the next instant, "the _Mortlake_ is
leading. Now if only----"

But what was that roar, at first a sullen boom, gradually deepening into
the excited skirling cheers of a vast throng.

Mortlake looked round, startled. Out of the distance two tiny dots,
momentarily growing larger, like homing birds, had come into view. Hark!
What was that the crowd were shouting? Those with field glasses threw the
cry out first, and then came a mighty roar, as it was caught up by
hundreds of throats.

"The Nameless! The Nameless wins!"

Mortlake paled, and caught at a post erected to hold up a telephone line.
He gazed at the oncoming aeroplanes. There were three of them now, but one
was far behind, laboring slowly. But the first was unquestionably the
_Golden Butterfly_. He could catch the yellow glint of her wings. And that
second craft--its silvery sheen betrayed it--was the Mortlake _Cobweb_, as
Roy had called it.

"Come on! Come on!" shouted Mortlake, uselessly as he knew, "what's the
matter with you?"

But alas, the _Cobweb_ didn't "come on." Some three or four minutes after
the _Golden Butterfly_ had alighted and been swallowed up in a surging,
yelling throng of enthusiasm-crazed aero fans, the _Cobweb_ fluttered
wearily to the ground, unnoticed almost amid the excitement over the
_Golden Butterfly's_ feat.

Mortlake raged, old Mr. Harding almost wept, and Fanning sulkily explained
that it wasn't his fault, the cylinders having overheated again. But not
all of this could wipe out those figures that had just been put up on the
board, which proclaimed a victory for the Prescott aeroplane by a margin
of three and twenty-one hundredths minutes!

CHAPTER XXIV.

FRIENDS AND FOES--CONCLUSION.

The winning of the "Sky Cruise," as the newspapers had dubbed it, was the
talk of Hampton that night. Not a small part of the zest with which it was
discussed was caused by the fact that a young girl had driven the machine
through its daring dash. The wires from New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia,
Boston and Richmond were kept hot with instructions from editors to their
representatives demanding interviews with the Girl Aviators. But to the
chagrin of the newspaper representatives, after seeing their machine
housed, the party had vanished.

This, on investigation, was not as mysterious as it had at first appeared.
There was a small door in the back of the Nameless's shed, and a