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As they hung on for dear life, Malvoise, his face gleaming white in the glare cast from one of the cabin ports, came up to them. "Do you think you can take the wheel for a while?" he asked Frank. "What with fear and exhaustion Constantio is almost unable to stand up." Frank agreed, and, followed by the others he entered the pilot-house.
"Come on," shouted Wells, "we are playing for too big a stake to let two boys and an old man beat us off. Who is for coming back and driving them off?" Constantio turned white, fighting was not in his line, but the sailor stepped to his side and whispered something, at the same time pressing his revolver to the Spaniard's head, and the wretch, trembling in every limb, followed the others back.
"Ah, then I can invent more dirigibles, large ones to carry passengers across the Atlantic," the boys heard Constantio say though of course, till Ben told them, they were not aware of the speaker's identity.
He saw a way to appropriate the entire mass of treasure. Silently as cats the plotters approached the pile of treasure sacks when they judged that the time was ripe for their raid on the valuables. Constantio, who was a coward at heart, had taken his station by the boat so as to be the furthest away from danger should the boys be aroused.
Constantio had recognized Ben Stubbs as soon as he set eyes on him, and laughed with apparent good nature at the recollection of their meeting in Boston. He had recovered the watch the little gamin got away with, he told them, and had never mentioned to Luther Barr the fact that Ben had inspected the air-ship and then escaped, for fear of the grim old millionaire's wrath.
As for Constantio and a red-headed bushy-whiskered man, whom the boys learned later on was Sam Wells, one of the three men who helped in working the dirigible, they seemed completely unnerved by the sight they had witnessed. Malvoise's sharp voice recalled them to themselves. "Come now, collect your wits," he shouted; "poor Sanborn's gone, and we can't save him.
"Come on, men," shouted Constantio, as he saw the mainstay of the attackers rendered helpless; "we've got enough loot in that one sack to secure us all a good sum when we get ashore. Come on I'm for the boat!" So saying he turned and ran at top speed for the boat, the others after him.
"Say, you are an all right mechanic," was Dick Richards' admiring tribute to Frank's skill. By noon the last traces of the hurricane had died out and the dirigible was driving forward over a sparkling sea with a cloudless sky overhead. After breakfast, in which the now resuscitated members of the crew and Constantio took part, Frank called them forward and told them of the fate of Malvoise.
"Now you be careful what you are doing, Concertina," he said, "or I'll have to send you where you won't make no more trouble." As he spoke there came a loud report from the direction of the camp. It was followed by another and another. "They have discovered us!" cried Constantio, seizing hold of the boat and trying to drag it off.
Then to mix it with equal parts of water and sand in the cylinders and screw the caps on." "Sounds easy," commented Harry. "I guess the hardest part will be to find the powder," put in Ben. "How are we to tell whether it's hydrogen gas powder or Seidlitz powder, I'd like to know." After a hasty breakfast a thorough rummaging of the cabin occupied by Constantio was begun.
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