So the minutes passed, bringing them ever nearer the breaking of another day.  The immensity of their undertaking no longer appalled them.  It was too late for consideration anyway, since they were now fully launched upon the flight, and turning back was not to be thought of.

Jack, waking out of a nap, looked down, and immediately uttered a loud cry.

“Why, it’s getting daylight, and you can glimpse the ocean!  How queer it looks, fellows, to be sure!  Is everything going well, Colin?”

“Couldn’t be improved on,” he was assured by the faithful pilot.

“First I must use the glasses to see how it looks at closer range,” Jack continued.  “Then I think we ought to have breakfast.  This cold air makes a fellow as hungry as a wolf.  I think I must have lost myself for a bit.”

Tom did not say anything, only smiled, but he knew that the other had enjoyed at least a full hour of sleep.

“How far are we from land, Tom, would you say?” next asked the observer, while he was adjusting the glasses to his eyes.

“Possibly a hundred and fifty miles, perhaps nearer two hundred,” Tom assured him, in a matter-of-fact tone, as though that was only what might be expected.

“Hello!  I can see a vessel already, and heading into the west!” declared Jack.  “Of course I can’t make out what she’s like, though I bet you her hull and funnels are camouflaged to beat the band, so as to fool those Hun submarine pirates with the stripes of black and white.  You don’t think it’s possible that could be the La Bretagne, Tom?”

“Well, hardly,” came the quick reply, “unless something happened to detain the French steamer after she left Havre days ago.  She ought to be a whole lot further along than this boat is.  She must be some small liner from Liverpool or Southampton, making for Halifax or New York.”

Jack presently tired of staring at the little speck far down below.

“I wonder if they can see us with a glass,” he next observed, as Tom began to hand out bread and butter, with hard-boiled eggs or ham between, and some warm coffee kept in Thermos bottles so as to take the chill of the high altitudes out of their bodies.

“Not a chance in a hundred,” Beverly assured him.  “Besides, those aboard the steamer are devoting all their efforts to watching for enemies in the water, and not among the clouds.”

They munched their breakfast and enjoyed it immensely.  Indeed it seemed as though they devoured twice as much as upon ordinary occasions.

“Lucky we laid in plenty of grub!” Jack declared, when finally all of them announced that they were satisfied.  “This Atlantic air makes one keep hungry all the time.  Now I can see that steamer plainly, for we’ve dropped a little lower.  Oh!  What can that mean?”

His voice had a ring of sudden alarm about it that instantly aroused Tom’s curiosity.  Even Lieutenant Beverly looked over his shoulder as though he, too, felt a desire to learn more.