"To a certain extent, yes," agreed Fosterdyke. "Apart from that, there’s a reliable report that Captain Theodore Nye, of the United States Army, is starting from Tampa, Florida, to-morrow in one of the large airships of the ’R’ type that the Air Ministry sold to America recently. That forces our hand. We’ll have to be at the starting-point--1100 miles away--by to-morrow mid-day, so as to replenish petrol and commence the competition flight before midnight." "And how about the Boche, sir?" "Count Karl von Sinzig? Not a word. He’s apparently out of it. Not even one of the ’also rans.’ Our formidable rivals are the Yankee and a Jap--a Count Hyashi--who will reach his Nadir somewhere in Uruguay. Let ’em all come--the more the merrier." All hands, including the workmen and mechanics who were not participating in the voyage, assembled in the large dining-hall for an impromptu farewell dinner, and to them the baronet broached the subject of the hurried departure of the "Golden Hind." The meal over, the task of getting the huge airship out of her shed began. Even though the wind was light the work was by no means simple. Incautious handling or a sudden change in the direction of the air currents might easily result in disaster. The operation had to be carried out after sunset and with the minimum of artificial light, since, for the present, the "Golden Hind’s" departure was to be kept secret. With her ballonets charged sufficiently to give her a slight lift, the airship rose until the base of the fuselage was a bare three feet from the ground. The crew were at their stations, Kenyon assisting Fosterdyke in the wheelhouse, while right aft Peter Bramsdean directed the movements of the "ground-men" holding the stern, securing, and trailing ropes. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the leviathan of the air emerged from the shed until her entire length, straining gently at the rope that tethered her to mother earth, lay exposed to the starlit sky. "All clear, sir!" reported Bramsdean through a speaking-tube. Curt but precise orders rang out from the navigation-room. The slight hiss of the brodium being released from the metal cylinders was barely audible above the sighing of the wind in the pine-tops until the gauges registering the "lift" of the airship indicated thirty-eight tons. Armed with a megaphone, Fosterdyke leant out of the window of the navigation-room. "All ready? ... Let go!" Simultaneously the twenty men holding the airship released their hold. That was where training and discipline told, for terrible to contemplate would have been the fate of an unwary "ground-man" had he retained his grip on the rope. But without an accident to mar the momentous event, the "Golden Hind" shot almost vertically into the air, attaining in a very short space of time an altitude of six thousand feet.