“No, and I’ve about concluded that we might as well risk it, and go in the airship.  Mr. Whitford has had time enough to work up his clew, I guess, and Andy will be sure to find out, sooner or later, that we are in the neighborhood.  I say let’s start for Logansville.”

Ned and Mr. Damon agreed with this and soon they were prepared to move.

“Where will you find Mr. Whitford?” asked Ned of his chum, as the Falcon arose in the air.

“At the post-office.  That’s where we arranged to meet.  There is a sort of local custom house there, I believe.”

Straight over the forest flew Tom Swift and his airship, with the great searchlight housed on top.  They delayed their start until the other craft had had a chance to get well ahead, and they were well up in the air; there was no sight of the biplane in which Andy had sailed over their heads a short time before.

“Where are you going to land?” asked Ned, as they came in view of the town.

“The best place I can pick out,” answered Tom.  “Just on the outskirts of the place, I think.  I don’t want to go down right in the centre, as there’ll be such a crowd.  Yet if Andy has been using his airship here the people must be more or less used to seeing them.”

But if the populace of Logansville had been in the habit of having Andy Foger sail over their heads, still they were enough interested in a new craft to crowd around when Tom dropped into a field near some outlying houses.  In a moment the airship was surrounded by a crowd of women and children, and there would probably been a lot of men, but for the fact that they were away at work.  Tom had come down in a residential section.

“Say, that’s a beauty!” cried one boy.

“Let’s see if they’ll let us go on!” proposed another.

“We’re going to have our own troubles,” said Tom to his chum.  “I guess I’ll go into town, and leave the rest of you on guard here.  Keep everybody off, if you have to string mildly charged electrical wires about the rail.”

But there was no need to take this precaution, for, just as the combined juvenile population of that part of Logansville was prepared to storm, and board the Falcon, Koku appeared on deck.

“Oh, look at the giant!”

“Say, this is a circus airship?”

“Wow!  Ain’t he big!”

“I’ll bet he could lift a house!”

These and other expressions came from the boys and girls about the airship.  The women looked on open-mouthed, and murmurs of surprise and admiration at Koku’s size came from a number of men who had hastily run up.

Koku stepped from the airship to the ground, and at once every boy and girl made a bee-line for safety.

“That will do the trick!” exclaimed Tom with a laugh.  “Koku, just pull up a few trees, and look as fierce as Bluebeard, and I guess we won’t be troubled with curiosity seekers.  You can guard the airship, Koku, better than electric wires.”