pread on all sides. Two torpedo-boats,
looking like toys, went northward, and tiny white waving specks showed
that the Jacks aboard were waving a salute to them. Off seaward a
black trailing blot against the horizon showed where some unseen
steamship plowed her way between ports. Mr. Giddings and the boys were
filled with admiration.

A small airplane is ideal for short flights, joyriding the heavens, or
sight-seeing among the clouds; but there is something more majestic and
stable about a big machine like the Sky-Bird II which a pilot soon
begins to love with a passion he never feels toward the little 'plane.
An exquisite community of spirit grows up between machine and pilot;
each, as it were, merges into the vitals of the other. The levers and
controls are the nervous system of the airplane, through which the will
of the aviator may be expressed--expressed in an infinitely fine
degree. Indeed, a flying-machine is something entirely apart from and
above all other contrivances of man's ingenuity. It is the nearest
thing to animate life which man has created. In the air an airplane
ceases to be a mere piece of dumb mechanism; it seems to throb with
feeling, and is capable not only of primary guidance and control, but
actually of expressing a pilot's temperament.

The lungs of the machine--its engines--are the crux of man's mechanical
wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost
as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and
synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into
one long-sustained and not inharmonious _boom-m-m-m-m!_ It is a song
of pleasant melody to the pilot, whose ear is ever pricked to catch the
first semblance of a "sharp" or "flat" note telling him that one or
more of the twelve cylinders of each busy engine is missing fire and
needs a little doctoring.

It was about four o'clock that afternoon when our party first sighted
the low, out-jutting sea-coast of Florida. As they came slowly toward
it, by reason of their angular course of approach, they could gradually
make out a group of green palms here and there along the white
stretches of sand, and see clusters of light-colored buildings, piers,
shipping, and people moving about. Thus they passed Juno and Palm
Beach, and then saw the thicker cluster of fine dwellings of Miami
itself, the most southerly city on the Florida mainland.

Paul was guiding the Sky-Bird at thi