and the Golden Butterfly. Round and round they tore, neither
of them gaining or losing a foot apparently. The thunder of their engines
grew deafeningly monotonous and the crowds watched them as if hypnotized
by the whirring aerial monsters.

All at once, though, a mighty roar proclaimed that something was
happening, and gazing down toward the further end of the track it could
be seen that Number Six, the Golden Butterfly, had made a daring attempt
to gain on the other machine, and had succeeded.

So close did the two aeroplanes edge to the end pylon in the effort to
secure the inside plane that for an instant it looked as if a crash must
result.

A thunder of cheers greeted the Golden Butterfly as she swept by the
grandstand on the next lap.

"That girl can drive all right," grudgingly admitted Fanning Harding.

"Yes, and she's pretty as a picture, too," put in Gid Gibbons; "guess you
were stuck on her once, weren't you, Fan?"

"Oh, shut up," growled Fanning angrily. "It makes no difference to you,
does it?"

The aeroplanes had been racing for an hour now, and neither showed any
signs of slacking speed. On the contrary, as they "warmed up," they
seemed to go the quicker. All at once an incident occurred which brought
the crowd to its feet yelling and cheering as if wild.

The driver of Number Five, as the two machines passed the grandstand, had
made a deliberate attempt to prevent the Golden Butterfly overhauling him
by jamming his aeroplane over toward a pylon and directly in front of the
Butterfly. For an instant it looked as if a crash must be inevitable, but
just as the spectators were beginning to turn pale and the more timid to
hide their eyes, the Butterfly was seen to make a graceful dip and dive
clean under the other aeroplane. It was a magnificent bit of aerial
driving, and the crowd appreciated it to the full. A roar and a shout
went up, to which the driver of Number Six responded with a wave of a
gloved hand.

Ten minutes later Number Five, two laps behind, and with a leaking
radiator, dropped out of the race, leaving the Golden Butterfly the
winner. Fanning Harding was white as a sheet as he saw an official with a
black and white checkered flag step out into the field. This was the
signal to the Golden Butterfly, which was still in the air, that the race
was over.

As the Prescott aeroplane dropped to earth in front of the grandstand
amid rapturous plaudits, the son of the Sandy Bay banker delib