for which was to take place in a week's time--entered the shed and,
making their way to a screened-off room in the corner, shed their
leather coats and woolen caps and removed the grime from their hands
and faces. Their mechanics, in the meantime, had shoved the Eagle into
the shed and closed the doors on the horde of the inquisitive.

The boys' flight had taken place above the aviation grounds of the
Aeronautic Society, situated at Mineola, on Long Island, a few miles
outside New York city. For several days they, and several others who
had announced their intention of competing for the coveted Hempstead
Plains Cup, had been making flights that had attracted vast crowds
from the metropolis and filled the papers with air-ship news. The city
was aviation mad.

The wide sweep of green flats was dotted at the end where the town
encroached upon it with the sheds in which were housed the different
aerial craft that were to take part in the great contest. Some of them
had tents snuggled closely up to them in which the machinists, and
others employed on them, made their temporary homes. Some were
elaborate structures of galvanized iron, carefully fireproofed and
covered with notices warning against smoking; others, again, were
plain, hastily erected wooden structures. The Boy Aviators' shed was
one of the latter, for they had returned from their adventures in
Africa only a short time before this story opens.

In that far-off country, as told in "The Boy Aviators in Africa; or,
an Aerial Ivory Trail," they had outwitted a wicked old man named
Luther Barr, who tried to steal from them the ivory that they had
recovered from the grip of an Arab slave-dealer. In Luther Barr's
yacht, which they had acquired in a surprising manner, they had