The _Golden Butterfly_, making about sixty miles,
was being rapidly left behind.
"I should think you'd be afraid of overheating your cylinders,"
volunteered the lieutenant.
Now, this was just what Mortlake was afraid of. But, as has been said, he
was the sort of man who, in sporting parlance, was willing always "to take
a chance" to beat any one he considered his rival. He was taking a
desperate chance now. Under the artificial means he had used to increase
the speed of his engines, the motor was "turning up" several hundred more
revolutions a minute than she had been built for.
Now they shot above the strip of white beach, and, below them the pleasant
meadow-lands and patches of verdant woods began to show once more.
All at once, the sign for which Mortlake had been watching so anxiously
manifested itself. A tiny curl of smoke ascended from one of the
cylinder-heads. A smell of blistering, burning paint was wafted back to
the nostrils of Lieut. Bradbury.
"I thought so," he said; "overheating already. Better slow down,
Mortlake."
Mortlake glanced back. The _Golden Butterfly_, much diminished in size now
by the distance, still hung doggedly on his heels.
"I'll give her more air," he vouchsafed stubbornly, "that ought to cool
her off a bit--that and advanced spark."
He manipulated the necessary levers, but before many minutes it became
apparent that, if urged at that rate, the _Silver Cobweb_ would never
reach Sandy Beach without a break-down.
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