It was no easy task. In the first place, they wished the route to be as close to the equator at all times as possible, so that their line of travel would approximate in distance the world's estimated circumference of 24,899 miles. In the second place, for stops they must choose cities or towns with either established landing-fields, or with grounds level enough for this purpose. In the third place, these airports must be so divided that they would not have to be visited during the hours of darkness, for few if any of them would be likely to have efficient enough lighting systems to make night landings safe. Within fifteen minutes the boys had the long table in front of them literally covered with geographies, atlases, loose maps, and encyclopaedias. Paul even brought up a globe as large as a pumpkin, while Bob was not content until he had secured a score of back numbers of travel magazines. Into this divers collection of diagrams and reading matter they dove with an avidity which would have surprised the teachers they had when they were in grammar school, if they could have seen them. It soon became evident that they would not only need a route and schedule to make their journey successful, but also an enormous amount of general information about the countries they would pass over. "We'll have to study trade winds, oceanic storm conditions, temperatures, inhabitants, topography, and so forth, and so forth," drawled Tom Meeks. "Say, fellows, I feel like kicking myself to think I didn't study my geography more and shoot paper-wads less, when I was a kid at school." "We'll have to do a lot of cramming, that's sure," averred John; "but we have several months for that. Just now we want to jump into this route and schedule." They made up several tentative routes, only to discard them. Finally, after several hours' work, they had one which everybody seemed to agree was the best that could be picked out. With the schedule, which was figured on the basis of 120 miles an hour airplane speed, the draft looked like this: _Miles Airport Arrive Leave_ ---- PANAMA ------------ 1:00p 20th 1672 Georgetown 5:30a 21st 7:30a 21st 1154 Para 6:00p 21st 9:00p 21st 2402 Freetown 6:15p 22d 9:15p 22d 1980 Kuka 1:00p 23d 8:00p 23d 2015 Aden 6:00a 24th 9:00a 24th 2116 Colombo 5:30a 25th 8:30a 25th 1612 Singapore 6:00p 25th 9:00p 25th 2218 Port Darwin 5:30p 26th 8:30p 26th 3826 Apia 5:45a *27th 8:45a 27th 2100 Nukahiva 9:00a 28th 12:00n 28th 3154 San Cristobal 6:00p 29th 9:00p 29th 650 PANAMA 5:30a 30th ------------- ----- 24899