The Baby Racer had struck a mass soft and yielding. It drove
through some substance rather than ran on its wheels. There was a
dive and a joggle. Then the machine came to a halt--submerged.

Whatever had received it now came up about the puzzled young
aviators as might a snowdrift or it heap of hay. Dave dashed a
filmy, flake-like substance resembling sawdust from eyes, ears and
mouth. Hiram tried to disentangle himself from strips and curls of
some light, fluffy substance. Then he cried out:

"Dave, it's shavings!"

"You don't say so."

"Yes, it is--a great heap of shavings, a big mountain of them."

"Lucky for us. If we had hit the bare ground I fear we would have
had a smash up."

Gradually and cautiously the two young aviators made their way out
of the seats of the machine. They got past the wings. A circle of
electric street lamps surrounded them on four sides. Their
radiance, dim and distant, seemed to indicate that they were in the
center of a factory yard covering several acres.

A little way off they could discern the outlines of high piles of
lumber and beyond these several buildings. The biplane lay partly
on its side, sunk deep in a heap of long, broad shavings. The mass
must have been fully a hundred feet in extent and fifteen to twenty
feet high. They reached its side and slid down the slant to the