in his hand,
made ready to launch it.

"Crack!" went the pistol.

At the same instant Tom, with a thrusting motion, released his model;
but, alas! instead of darting forward like the Sparrow Hawk it was
named after, the craft ingloriously wobbled about eccentrically, and
finally alighted on an old lady's bonnet, causing her to exclaim as the
propeller whizzed round and entangled itself in her hair:

"No good'll ever come of teaching lads to meddle with these here
contraptions."

The model having finally been extricated, amid much laughter, and poor
Tom having offered mortified apologies, the announcer made known that
Hiram Nelson's Doodlebug monoplane would essay a flight.

As the pistol sounded, Hiram launched his craft, and amid cheers from
the crowd it soared up, and, just clearing the red tape, settled
gracefully down a few feet the other side of the two hundred foot line.

"Good for you, Hiram!" exclaimed Ernest Thompson, the bike scout, who
was acting as a patrol on the course. "Whose turn next?"

"You kids wait till I get my Bleriot started," sneered Jack. Several
small boys near him, who were mortally afraid of the big fellow and
rather admired him as being "manly," set up a cheer at this.

"Wait for Jack's dandy model to fly!" they cried.

"Edward Rivers--model of a Curtiss biplane!" came the next announcement
through, the megaphone.

Another cheer greeted this, as young Rivers was also on the "town team."

The little Curtiss darted into the air at the pistol crack and flew
straight as an arrow for the red tape. It cleared it easily and
skimmed on down past the grand stand, and alighted, fluttering like a
tired butterfly, beyond Hiram's model.

"Three hundred feet!" cried the announcer, amid a buzz of approval,
after the measurers of the course had done their work.

"Paul Perkins--Bleriot!" was the next announcement.

A hum of excitement went through the crowds that lined the track. It
began to look as if the record of Ed Rivers' machine would be hard to
beat, but from the determined look on his face and his gritted teeth it
was evident that Paul meant to try hard.

Before the report of the pistol had died out, the yellow-winged
Dragonfly soared upward from Paul's hand and darted like a streak
across the red tape, clearing it at the highest altitude yet achieved
by any of the models.

"Hurrah!" yelled the crowd.

On and on sped the little Bleriot, while Paul watched it with
pride-flushe