"Do you suppose he's got three?" Anton asked. This was amazing riches, three kites. All the boys knew what a tremendous amount of careful and exacting work went into the making of even one of them. Out darted Tom and laid a third and then a fourth kite on the ground. The four great kites, each of them with the forward part white and the rear section painted black, made a noble showing in the afternoon sun. Ralph, with his ever-ready camera, stepped forward. "Wait a minute," said Tom, "I've got another one," and he darted into the house to get it. He returned a moment later with a fifth kite, similar in every detail to the other four and then, readily enough, posed beside the kites for his picture. Overhead flew the Stars and Stripes. "I want that for the _Review_," said Fred. "What are you going to do, Tom?" asked Ross. Tom hesitated a moment and then announced: "I'm going to try for a world's record!" The audacity of this startled the boys for a moment, and then a shout went up, while word was passed around the crowd that Issaquena County was going to try for the kite record of the world. The first kite, which no one but Tom and the Forecaster had yet seen in flight, took the air and was off. Tom gave it four hundred feet of line and then fastened his second kite, which he let run up until eight hundred feet more of the line was out. The wind was now stronger, registering twenty-two miles an hour. The three lower kites were run in tandem, about two hundred feet of line apart. When the last of the five kites was still on the ground, the topmost one was out of sight, and the kites were carrying only a fraction of the weight of wire that their lifting surface could bear. "I'm afraid of it, sir," said Tom, his finger on the wire that was running from the reel, "it doesn't feel right." "Probably your lower kite is in gusts," the Forecaster answered. "Let her go up, there may be calmer wind higher. Fasten on your three small ones, now, Tom; you might as well have all the sail area that you can." The eighth kite was started on its journey upwards. Only those with the strongest eyes now could see the second group of three, the first pair was far out of sight. With Anton carefully measuring the angle of altitude and giving Tom the figures in a low voice, Tom, watching the registering apparatus on the reel, suddenly announced: "Two miles up!" The reel rattled merrily as the line was paid out, the brake keeping it at exactly a uniform pressure under Tom's skillful guiding. "Two miles and a half!" The crowd began to press around the reel. Nothing was visible in the air, now, nothing but a thin piece of wire leading up into the sky. Had no one known that the kites were there, high above the clouds, it would have seemed like black magic. Some of the superstitious negroes began to mutter among themselves. "Three miles!" The boys yelled in delight. "Up with her, Tom!" cried Fred.