enough to mail some letters for us?"

"With pleasure!" came the reply in a big, bellowing British voice, from
one of the stalwart figures beneath.

"All right; Roy, come down as low as you dare," cried Peggy, catching her
bundle of "mail."

Roy threw over a couple of levers and turned a valve. Instantly the
_Golden Butterfly_ began to drop in long, beautiful arc. She shot by above
the liner's bridge at a height of not more than fifteen feet. At the
correct moment Peggy dropped the weighted bundle overboard, and had the
satisfaction of seeing one of the officers catch it. The gallant officers,
now realizing for the first time that a girl--and a pretty one--was one
of the passengers of the big aeroplane, waved their hats and bowed
profoundly.

And Peggy--what would Aunt Sallie have said!--Peggy blew them a kiss. But
then, as she told Jess later:

"I was in an aeroplane, my dear--a sort of an unattainable possibility, in
fact."

In the meantime, Mortlake, in the _Silver Cobweb_, had been duly mystified
as to what the _Golden Butterfly_ was about when she swooped downward on
the steamer. For one instant the thought flashed across him that they were
disabled. An unholy glee filled him at the thought. If only the _Golden
Butterfly_ were to come to grief right under Lieut. Bradbury's eyes, it
would be a great feather in the cap of the Mortlake-Harding machine.

But, to his chagrin, he saw them rise the next instant, as cleverly as
ever. Lieut. Bradbury, who had been watching the maneuver of the _Golden
Butterfly_, gave an admiring gasp, as he witnessed the daring feat.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, and the evident note of astonishment and
appreciation in his tones did not tend to increase Mortlake's
self-satisfaction.

"The pesky brats," he muttered to himself; "we've got to do something to
put them out of the race. There isn't another American-built aeroplane
that I fear except that bothersome kids' machine."

And there and then Mortlake began to hatch up a scheme that in the near
future was to come very nearly proving disastrous to Peggy and Roy and
their high hopes.

"Magnificently handled, don't you think so, Mortlake?" inquired the naval
officer, the next instant.

"Yes, very clever," agreed Mortlake, far too smart to show his inward
feelings, or to wear his heart upon his sleeve; "very neat. But I can do
the same thing if you'd care to see it?"

The naval officer glanced at the puffy features of his com