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[Illustration: FRANK WAS LIFTED BY MAIN FORCE AND PLACED IN IT.--_Page
228._]




                           THE BOY AVIATORS'
                          FLIGHT FOR A FORTUNE

                                   BY
                         CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON

                     AUTHOR OF "THE BOY AVIATORS,"
                        "DREADNOUGHT BOYS," ETC.

                            _ILLUSTRATED BY_
                           _CHARLES L. WRENN_

                                NEW YORK
                            HURST & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                            Copyright, 1912,
                                   BY
                            HURST & COMPANY




                                CONTENTS

             CHAPTER                                      PAGE
                  I. On Brig Island                          5
                 II. The Wireless                           22
                III. A Night Alarm                          36
                 IV. Cut Adrift                             45
                  V. Adventures on the Hulk                 56
                 VI. Harry Meets an Old Friend              66
                VII. A Puzzling Problem                     80
               VIII. The Derelict Destroyer                 89
                 IX. The Flight of the "Sea Eagle"          97
                  X. "C. Q. D.!"                           112
                 XI. "Good Luck!"                          121
                XII. Through the Night                     129
               XIII. A Twentieth-Century Rescue            137
                XIV. Ben's Plan Stolen                     148
                 XV. What Happened Ashore                  158
                XVI. Off on the "Air Route"                170
               XVII. An Aerial Ambulance                   180
              XVIII. An Errand of Mercy                    189
                XIX. Plumbo Found Wanting                  199
                 XX. Frank's Battle                        209
                XXI. A Rascally Trick                      219
               XXII. Reunited!                             230
              XXIII. Off Once More                         237
               XXIV. A Struggle for Life                   246
                XXV. A Race to Cloudland                   253
               XXVI. The Boy Aviators' Pluck               264
              XXVII. Captured by Aeroplane                 275




THE BOY AVIATORS' FLIGHT FOR A FORTUNE




CHAPTER I.--ON BRIG ISLAND.


The sharp bow of Zenas Daniels' green and red dory grazed the yellow
beach on the west shore of Brig Island, a wooded patch of land lying
about a mile off the Maine Shore in the vicinity of Casco Bay. His son
Zeb, a lumbering, uncouth-looking lad of about eighteen, with a
pronounced squint, leaped from the craft as it was beached, and seized
hold of the frayed painter preparatory to dragging her farther up the
beach.

In the meantime Zenas himself, brown and hatchetlike of face, and lean
of figure--with a tuft of gray whisker on his sharp chin, like an
old-fashioned knocker on a mahogany door--gathered up a pile of lobster
pots from the stern of the dory and shouldered them. A few lay loose,
and those he flung out on the beach.

These last Zeb gathered up, and as his