"Are we the first
to cross the continent?"
How anxiously Dick waited for the answer. "No, not the first,"
replied the San Francisco officer. "One biplane arrived yesterday.
What is your time?"
Lieutenant McBride made a hasty calculation.
"Sixty-two hours, forty minutes and fourteen seconds from, New York,
taking out the time of two landings," was the reply.
"Then you win!" cried Captain Weston, as he introduced himself.
"That is, unless this other craft can better your time. For the
first arrival was seventy-two hours altogether."
And Dick had won, for the biplane with which he had just had the
exciting race, had consumed more than eighty hours, exclusive of
stops, from coast to coast.
"Hurray, Dick! You win!" cried Innis, clapping his chum on the
back.
"The best trans-continental flight ever made!" declared Captain
Weston, as he congratulated the young millionaire.
"I'd like to have gotten here first," murmured Dick.
"Well, you'd have been here first, only for the delay my airship
caused you," said Uncle Ezra. "I'm sorry."
"But you get the prize," spoke Lieutenant McBride.
"Yes," assented Captain Weston, of Fort Mason. "It was the time
that counted, not the order of arrival. Which reminds me that you
may yet be beaten, Mr. Hamilton, for there are other airships on
the way."
But Dick was not beaten. His nearest competitor made a poorer
record by several hours, so Dick's performance stood.
And that, really, is all there is to tell of this story, except to
add that by the confession of Larson, later it was learned that he
had tampered with Mr.
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