"Oh, anywhere. Just to take a little run in the upper regions, and
clear some of the cobwebs out of my head. I declare, I guess I've
got the spring fever. I haven't done anything since we got back from
Russia last fall, and I'm getting rusty."

"You haven't done ANYTHING!" exclaimed Ned, following his chum's
example by tossing aside the book. "Do you call working on your new
invention of a noiseless airship nothing?"

"Well, I haven't finished that yet. I'm tired of inventing things. I
just want to go off, and have some good fun, like getting
shipwrecked on a desert island, or being lost in the mountains, or
something like that. I want action. I want to get off in the jungle,
and fight wild beasts, and escape from the savages!"

"Say! you don't want much," commented Ned. "But I feel the same way,
Tom."

"Then come on out and take a run, and maybe we'll get on the track
of an adventure," urged the young inventor. "We won't go far, just
twenty or thirty miles or so."

The two youths emerged from the house and started across the big
lawn toward the aeroplane sheds, for Tom Swift owned several speedy
aircrafts, from a big combined aeroplane and dirigible balloon, to a
little monoplane not much larger than a big bird, but which was the
most rapid flier that ever breathed the fumes of gasolene.

"Which one you going to take, Tom?" asked Ned, as his chum paused in