“Not a doubt of it,” was Merritt’s reply.

“Oh, well,” put in Tubby, for the three inseparables were standing together, “if he can win the prize fairly, don’t knock him.  He certainly has built a beautiful machine.  You’ve got to give him credit for that.”

And now, as Jack, with a triumphant smile at the glances of admiration his model excited, strode to the starting point, elbowing small boys aside, and drew from the hat, the man with the megaphone once more arose.  He held in his hand the result of the drawing and the order in which the models would fly.

“The f-i-r-s-t model to com-pete for the big p-r-ize,” he bellowed, “will be that of Thomas Maloney—­a Bler-i-ot!”

Poor Tom might have called his machine a Bleriot, but it is doubtful if the designer of the original machine of that name would have recognized the model as having any more than a distant relationship to the famous type of monoplane.  It was provided with a large tin propeller, however, and seemed capable of at least accomplishing a flight.  In fact, at the trials in the morning it had flown well, and by some of the lads was regarded as a sort of “dark horse.”  As Tom was on the village team, as opposed to the Boy Scout contingent, he was greeted with loud cheers and whistles by his friends as he stepped to the starting line, and, holding his already wound up machine in his hand, made ready to launch it.

“Crack!” went the pistol.

At the same instant Tom, with a thrusting motion, released his model; but, alas! instead of darting forward like the Sparrow Hawk it was named after, the craft ingloriously wobbled about eccentrically, and finally alighted on an old lady’s bonnet, causing her to exclaim as the propeller whizzed round and entangled itself in her hair: 

“No good’ll ever come of teaching lads to meddle with these here contraptions.”

The model having finally been extricated, amid much laughter, and poor Tom having offered mortified apologies, the announcer made known that Hiram Nelson’s Doodlebug monoplane would essay a flight.

As the pistol sounded, Hiram launched his craft, and amid cheers from the crowd it soared up, and, just clearing the red tape, settled gracefully down a few feet the other side of the two hundred foot line.

“Good for you, Hiram!” exclaimed Ernest Thompson, the bike scout, who was acting as a patrol on the course.  “Whose turn next?”

“You kids wait till I get my Bleriot started,” sneered Jack.  Several small boys near him, who were mortally afraid of the big fellow and rather admired him as being “manly,” set up a cheer at this.

“Wait for Jack’s dandy model to fly!” they cried.

“Edward Rivers—­model of a Curtiss biplane!” came the next announcement through, the megaphone.

Another cheer greeted this, as young Rivers was also on the “town team.”

The little Curtiss darted into the air at the pistol crack and flew straight as an arrow for the red tape.  It cleared it easily and skimmed on down past the grand stand, and alighted, fluttering like a tired butterfly, beyond Hiram’s model.