One thing pleased them, and this was the fact that for the most part the return journey would be down-grade. In consequence they expected to make the distance separating them from the road in about half the time it had taken in coming.
Bud hurried through the morning meal. Indeed, Ralph even joked him on his seeming lack of appet.i.te; for as a rule Bud was a good feeder and came second only to Billy Worth, long recognized as champion in the troop.
"Well, you see," Bud explained, "there are a whole lot of important things I mean to do to-day, and the sooner I get busy the better chance I"ll have to go through the list. First thing of all is to take a little tramp around toward the west of the camp, to see if I can stumble on the place where that last old shooting star struck us.
I"m going to look sharp for a hole, because it seems to me such a big lump of iron and other ore would smash into our earth at a pretty lively clip."
"Hold on a minute and let"s start fair!" called out Ralph. "We"re just as anxious as you are to make some sort of discovery, eh, Hugh?"
"Some sort, yes," the patrol leader admitted, with a queer little smile that Bud noticed, but could not understand just then.
So the three boys started to comb the immediate vicinity of the shack, spreading out in something like a fan formation. They took to the west, because all of them seemed to be of one opinion: that the dreadful crash had come from that particular quarter.
Now and then one of them would call out or give the Wolf signal, just to inform the others where he happened to be. In this manner some ten minutes went by and Hugh was thinking that the explosion must have been much further away than any of them had suspected at the time, when Bud was heard giving tongue.
Bud, when excited, always broke loose and allowed himself free rein.
"Come this way, boys!" he was shouting gleefully. "I"ve run the old meteor to earth. My stars! what a terrible hole she did make!
Must be as big as a house!"
CHAPTER VIII
UNCLE SAM"S FLYING SQUADRON
"_How---oo---ooo_!"
Ralph gave the long-drawn cry of the timber wolf as he hurried in the direction of Bud"s shouts. Hugh speedily joined him, coming from some side quarter, and the pair were soon closing in on the other scout.
They found Bud clinging to a shattered sapling and staring down into a gaping aperture that looked big enough for the excavation of a church cellar. All around were evidences of a most tremendous explosion or upheaval, some trees being actually shattered and others leaning over as though ready to fall.
"Talk to me about your meteors," burst out the wondering Bud as he saw the others coming along, "I hope to goodness one of them never drops down on our roof at home. Just looky here what it did to the poor old earth! That sky traveler"s as big as the parsonage, I should think."
Hugh turned to Ralph.
"No doubt about what happened now, is there?" he asked.
"Well, I should say not," came the answer, as Ralph stared down into the hole.
"Must be some new sort of explosive they"re experimenting with,"
added the patrol leader seriously; "and to look at that gap you"d believe it beats dynamite all hollow. Drop a bomb made of that stuff on a fort, and goodby to the whole business."
"W---what"s that?" exclaimed the wondering Bud. "Do you mean to tell me that it wasn"t a meteor that made all that racket the last two nights?"
"So far as I know," Hugh told him, "when a meteor drops down, it buries itself in the earth and gradually cools off, for it"s been made almost red-hot by pa.s.sing so swiftly through s.p.a.ce. But it doesn"t, as a rule, burst and tear a horrible slash in the ground like this."
"Then what made it, Hugh?" asked the other, evidently puzzled.
"A dropped bomb!"
"A bomb, you say? Oh, Hugh, that was why the old aeroplane kept circling all around, wasn"t it? They were picking out some place to make a big hole! Whee! No wonder then they came up here to this lonely place to try things out. A farmer"d be apt to kick like a steer if he waked up some fine morning and found holes like this in his garden or field. It"s good we didn"t happen to be standing here when they dropped the bomb, as you call it."
"I had an idea of something like this last night," Hugh said; "but thought best not to mention it until I could see my way clearer.
But now the last doubt has gone, and I know the truth."
"But Hugh, who could it be trying out this awful explosive, and wanting to do it where no curious eyes could watch the operation?"
"I don"t know that, Bud, but we can guess. It must be either some company in the market with explosives, or else the Government itself trying to see how the Flying Squadron, as they call their aerial arm of the service, could work in time of actual war."
"Say, if they could drop bombs like that just, where they wanted,"
remarked Bud admiringly, "I"d pity the enemy, whether j.a.panese or German or anything else. Just think of a great big bat circling around in the darkness of night, sending down a searchlight, maybe, to pick out the right spot, and then, bang! Good-by to your old fort or battleship! It would be all over before you could wink twice.
And let me tell you, fellows, we"ve got the bully boys in the army to do this same stunt, if anybody on earth can!"
"Thank you for the compliment, my boy!"
A quiet voice said this, and the three scouts looked up hastily to discover that a man clad in a faded suit of khaki was standing close by, watching them with an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt on his clear-cut face.
There was something about his make-up that instantly convinced Hugh of his connection with the aviation corps of the Government service.
This, then, would seem to prove that it was the army engaged in making these secret experiments with the new explosive, perhaps from a war aeroplane that may have been given over into the charge of the Flying Corps for trial.
Hugh immediately advanced toward the officer and gave the regular salute, as every scout is taught to do when he meets one who is above him in rank. To his delight, the other acknowledged the salute immediately.
"We are Boy Scouts belonging to a town some miles away from here,"
Hugh started to explain.
"And what are you doing here?" inquired the officer pleasantly.
"We came up to watch one of my chums experiment with a device he believes he has discovered," replied Hugh. "For the last two nights we have been puzzled to understand what that terrible roar and flash meant. At first, we thought a meteor had fallen; but when it came again last night and we saw the aeroplane swinging around up there in the sky, I began to believe there was some connection between them. And now that we"ve found this hole in the ground, I know it shows where your bomb struck, Lieutenant."
"Yes, that is what happened," remarked the officer. "I came here this morning to take notes, so that I could make a full report of our practice. We have not thought it necessary to make use of our searchlight so far when dropping a bomb; but now that we know others besides ourselves are up here, we must be more careful.
Perhaps I would hesitate to say all this to most people whom I happened to meet by accident, but I know what Boy Scouts are and how devoted they have always proved to patriotic motives. I"m positively certain that nothing could tempt one of you lads to betray any confidence I placed in you."
"Thank you, sir," said Hugh, flushing with keen pleasure at hearing such words of praise from an army officer. "And perhaps you may not know that there are others up here who seem to be deeply interested in all that you are doing."
"What is that, my boy?" exclaimed the other, showing sudden interest.
"Why, by chance my friend here, Ralph Kenyon, who has trapped all through this section in years gone by, saw two men talking and acting in a strange way. They"ve been spying on us, too, while we"ve occupied the old shack close by. They even crept in while we were off yesterday, to steal some plans of an aeroplane improvement which this other scout, Bud Morgan, had carelessly left there."
"Two men, you say," the officer commented, knitting his brows with sudden suspicion and uneasiness. "Could you tell whether they seemed to look like natives or foreigners, son and he wheeled so as to face Ralph as he asked this.
"I had an idea that one looked like a j.a.panese and the other a German," the boy answered promptly.
At this, the army man rubbed his chin and seemed to consider.
"I"ve taken you into my confidence so far already, boys," he observed presently, "that I suppose I might as well go right along and tell you everything. We are up here, representing the Flying Squadron of the army, to experiment with a new war aeroplane much more powerful than anything before devised; also to ascertain whether there is any truth in the wild claims put forth by the inventor of the latest explosive, that his discovery must make war so horrible that nations would be compelled to keep the peace after this. And, judging from what that one small bomb did here, I fancy he was not mistaken in his estimate. We could destroy the largest battleship afloat as easy as to snap our fingers. Of course there are secret agents of numerous Great Powers constantly floating around in Washington, trying to learn what Uncle Sam has up his sleeve in the way of new inventions calculated to destroy the enemy in time of war.
And we have feared all along that one or more of these spies may have gotten on our track. I"m very much gratified with what you have told me, for now we know what to expect, and can avoid taking any unnecessary risk."