prolonged his stay nearly a week.
He paid many visits to the airship shed.

Mr. Vardon, and Jack, his right-hand man, and the other workmen labored
hard. The airship began to look like what she was intended for. She
was of a new model and shape, and seemed to be just what Dick wanted.
Of course she was in a sense an experiment.

The main cabin, though, containing the living and sleeping quarters, as
well as the machinery, was what most pleased Dick and his chums.

"It's like traveling in a first-class motor-boat, only up in the
clouds, instead of in the water," declared Innis.

CHAPTER XI

A SURPRISE

"Toss over that monkey wrench; will you?"

"Say, who had the saw last?"

"I know I laid a hammer down here, but it's gone now!"

"Look out there! Low bridge! Gangway! One side!"

These, and many other cries and calls, came from the big barn-like
shed, where Dick Hamilton's airship was being constructed. Dick
himself, and his two chums, Innis Beeby and Paul Drew, had joined
forces with Mr. Vardon in helping on the completion of the Abaris.

"We've got to get a move on!" Dick had said, after he had sent in his
application to compete for the twenty thousand dollar government prize.
"We don't want to be held back at the last minute. Boys, we've got to
work on this airship ourselves."

"We're with you!" cried Innis and Paul, eagerly.

And so, after some preliminary instructions from Mr. Vardon, the cadets
had taken the tools and started to work.

It did not come so unhandily to them as might have been imagined. At
the Kentfield Military Academy they had been called upon to do much
manual labor, in preparation for a military life.

There had been pontoon bridges to build across streams, by means of
floats and boats. There had been other bridges to throw across defiles
and chasms. There were artillery and baggage wagons to transport along
poor roads. And all this, done for practice, now stood Dick and his
chums in good stead.

They knew how to employ their hands, which is the best training in the
world for a young man, and they could also use tools to advantage.

So now we find Dick, Paul and Innis laboring over the new airship, in
which the young millionaire hoped to make a flight across the United
States, from ocean to ocean.

"That's what I like to see!" exclaimed Uncle Ezra, as he came out to
the shed just before he started back for Dankville. "It does young men
good to work. Pity more