uted Mr. Whitford.

Like a bird the Falcon shot upward in pursuit noiselessly and
resistlessly, the beam of the great searchlight playing on the other
craft, which dodged to one side in an endeavor to escape.

"On the trail at last!" cried Tom, as he shoved over the accelerator
lever, sending his airship forward on an upward slant, right at the
stern of the smugglers' biplane.

CHAPTER XIX

IN DIRE PERIL

Upward shot the Falcon. With every revolution of her big propellers
she came nearer and nearer to the fleeing craft of the supposed
smugglers who were using every endeavor to escape.

"Do you think you can catch them, Tom?" asked Mr. Whitford as he stood
at the side of our hero in the pilot house, and looked upward and
forward to where, bathed in the light of the great search-lantern, the
rival craft was beating the air.

"I'm sure we can--unless something happens."

"Bless my overshoes! What can happen?" asked Mr. Damon, who, after
finding that everything in the motor room was running smoothly, had
come forward. Ned was attending to the searchlight. "What can
happen, Tom?"

"Almost anything, from a broken shaft to a short-circuited motor.
Only, I hope nothing does occur to prevent us from catching them."

"You don't mean to say that you're actually going to try to catch
them, do you, Tom?" asked the custom officer, "I thought if we could
trail them to the place where they have been delivering the goods,
before they shipped them to Shopton we'd be doing well. But I never
thought of catching them in mid-air."

"I'm going to try it," declared the young inventor. "I've got a
grappling anchor on board," he went on, "attached to a meter and
windlass. If I can catch that anchor in any part of their ship I can
bring them to a stop, just as a fisherman lands a trout. Only I've
got to get close enough to make a cast, and I want to be above them
when I do it."

"Don't you think you can catch them, Tom?" asked Mr. Damon.

"Well, I'm pretty sure I can, and yet they seem to have a faster
biplane than I gave them credit for. I guess I'll have to increase
our speed a little," and he shifted a lever which made the Falcon
shoot along at nearly doubled speed.

Still the other airship kept ahead, not far, but sufficiently so to
prevent the grappling anchor from being tossed at her rail.

"I wonder if they are the smugglers?" questioned Mr. Damon. "It
might be possible, Tom, that we're chasing the wrong craft."