“Don’t leave us here!” they pleaded.

“I wouldn’t have you on board my airship another minute for a fortune!” declared Tom, as he signalled to Ned to start the motor.  Then the Flyer ascended on high, leaving the plotters and started back for the fire, of which Tom got a series of fine moving pictures.

A week later our friends were in Paris, having made a quick trip, on which little of incident occurred, though Tom managed to get quite a number of good views on the way.

He found a message awaiting him, from Mr. Period.

“Well, where to now?” asked Ned, as his chum read the cablegram.

“Great Scott!” cried our hero.  “Talk about hair-raising jobs, this certainly is the limit!”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“I’ve got to get some moving pictures of a volcano in action,” was the answer.  “Say, if I’d known what sort of things ‘Spotty’ wanted, I’d never have consented to take this trip.  A volcano in action, and maybe an earthquake on the side!  This is certainly going some!”

CHAPTER XXIII — AT THE VOLCANO

“And you’ve got to snap-shot a volcano?” remarked Ned to his chum, after a moment of surprised silence.  “Any particular one?  Is it Vesuvius?  If it is we haven’t far to go.  But how does Mr. Period know that it’s going to get into action when we want it to?”

“No, it isn’t Vesuvius,” replied Tom.  “We’ve got to take another long trip, and we’ll have to go by steamer again.  The message says that the Arequipa volcano, near the city of the same name, in Peru, has started to ‘erupt,’ and, according to rumor, it’s acting as it did many years ago, just before a big upheaval.”

“Bless my Pumice stones!” cried Mr. Damon.  “And are you expected to get pictures of it shooting out flames and smoke, Tom?”

“Of course.  An inactive volcano wouldn’t make much of a moving picture.  Well, if we go to Peru, we won’t be far from the United States, and we can fly back home in the airship.  But we’ve got to take the Flyer apart, and pack up again.”

“Will you have time?” asked Mr. Nestor.  “Maybe the volcano will get into action before you arrive, and the performance will be all over with.”

“I think not,” spoke Tom, as he again read the cablegram.  “Mr. Period says he has advices from Peru to the effect that, on other occasions, it took about a month from the time smoke was first seen coming from the crater, before the fireworks started up.  I guess we’ve got time enough, but we won’t waste any.”

“And I guess Montgomery and Kenneth won’t be there to make trouble for us,” put in Ned.  “It will be some time before they get away from that African town, I think.”

They began work that day on taking the airship apart for transportation to the steamer that was to carry them across the ocean.  Tom decided on going to Panama, to get a series of pictures on the work of digging that vast canal.  On inquiry he learned that a steamer was soon to sail for Colon, so he took passage for his friends and himself on that, also arranging for the carrying of the parts of his airship.