The aviator, cramped and stiffened as he was by the intense cold that prevails in the high levels where he had been flying, was no match for them.  As they sprang at him his face took on the most ludicrous appearance of utter surprise.  Had he suspected that they would attack him he might have drawn a pistol.  As it was, he was helpless before the two boys, both in the pink of condition and determined to capture him.  He made a struggle, but in two minutes he was laying roped, tied, and utterly helpless.  He was not silent; he breathed the most fearful threats as to what would happen to them.  But neither boy paid any attention to him.

“We’ve got to get him to the car,” said Harry.  “Can we drag him?”

“Yes.  But if we loosen his feet a little, he could walk,” suggested Dick.  “That would be ever so much easier for him, and for us too.  I should hate to be dragged.  Let’s make him walk.”

“Right — and a good idea!” said Harry.  He loosened the ropes about the aviator’s feet, and helped him to stand.

“March!” he said.  “Don’t try to get away — I’ve got a leading rope, you see.”

He did have a loose end of rope, left over from a knot, and with this he proceeded to lead the enraged German to the automobile.  It looked for all the world as if he were leading a dog, and for a moment Dick doubled up in helpless laughter.  The whole episode had it’s comic side, but it was serious, too.

“Now we’ve got to draw off the gasoline in the tank in this bucket,” said Harry.  The German had been bestowed in the tonneau, and made as comfortable as possible with rugs and cushions.  His feet were securely tied again, and there was no chance for him to escape.

“What are you going to do?” asked Dick.  “Are you going to try to fly in that machine?”

“I don’t know, yet.  But I’m going to have it ready, so that I can if I need to,” said Harry.  “That Bleriot maybe the saving of us yet, Dick.  There’s no telling what we shall have to do.”

Even as he spoke, Harry was making new plans, rendered possible by this gift from the skies.  He was beginning, at last, to see a way to circumvent the Germans.  What he had in mind was risky, certainly, and might prove perilous in the extreme.  But he did not let that aspect of the situation worry him.  His one concern was to foil the terrible plan that the Germans had made, and he was willing to run any risk that would help him to do so.

“The Zeppelin is coming here to Bray Park — it’s going to land here,” said Harry.  “And if it ever gets away from here there will be no way of stopping it from doing all the damage they have planned, or most of it.  Thanks to Graves, we wouldn’t be believed if we tell what we know — we’d probably just be put in the guard house.  So we’ve got to try to stop it ourselves.”

They had reached the Bleriot by that time.  Harry filled the tank, and looked at the motor.  Then he sat in the driver’s seat and practiced with the levers, until he decided that he understood them thoroughly.  And, as he did this, he made his decision.