"We will make a long trip tonight--clear across the lake." "Suppose you get a sight of the Drifter?" "Then we'll know that it is really here, won't we?" "Yes, but are you going to jog right into them and capture them?" "Hardly," laughed Dave. "I hope if we do come across the Drifter, that we can follow it or keep it company, or find out where it is hidden away in the daytime. We will have to run across it before we can decide what circumstances will lead us to do." "They're an ugly crowd--the Dawsons, and probably the fellows with them, too." "I realize that. Mr. Price insisted on my taking these," and Dave began opening a boxlike package he had brought with him in the skiff. "Hello," cried Hiram, as two good sized weapons and some boxes of cartridges were disclosed. "Do we have to use them?" "I hope not," replied Dave, "but Mr. Price said we might come to a pinch where we could use them to show we were not unprotected, and to scare any crowd that tried to interfere with us." "Well, it begins to look like real business," commented Hiram. "That's what we're here for." "Yes, indeed." They had no difficulty in getting the Monarch II aloft, the hollow extending for several hundred feet. The night was ideal for a secret sky voyage. A slight mist hung over the ground, but at a height of five hundred feet the air was perfectly clear. There was bright starlight, and against the radiance they could make out flying birds quite a distance away. Dave took a route across the lake diagonally from Anseton. They skirted the other shore for about ten miles. Then they recrossed the lake. The machine made a sweep along the coast line. "Well, Dave," remarked his trusty assistant, "we've run across no air bird so far." "I didn't expect to, all at once," was Dave's reply. "We can only keep at it." "And trust to luck--I say!" Hiram interrupted himself with a shout. Just beneath them an excursion steamer was ploughing its way through the waves, bound citywards on its return trip. They could hear the music of the band aboard, until now drowned out by hoarse blare of the fog whistle. At the same moment a broad vivid flare of electric radiance shot across the sky from the deck of the steamer. It waved horizontally in some signal to the landing dock two miles further away. Then the operator of this glowing searchlight sent its gleams upwards in a slow way, as if for scenic effect for the passengers on board. "The mischief!" exclaimed Dave bending to levers and starting the Monarch II forward at best speed. Hiram sat staring. He blinked, half-blinded. The machine was irradiated in clear, sharp outlines as the great searchlight glare was focused, a speck of action in the sky.