On a Torn-Away World | Page 4

hour ere the flying
machine left the steel plank, and shot into the air with the fearful force of the compressed
air behind it.
Both Mark and Jack were well used to guiding aeroplanes and other air machines. But

this start from the ground was much different from the easy, swooping flight of an airship
as usually begun. Like an arrow the Snowbird was shot upward on a long slant. It was a
moment ere Mark got the controls to working. The propellers were, of course, started
with the first stroke of the motor.
But Mark Sampson was nervous; there was no denying that. At the instant when the nose
of the airship should have been raised, so as to clear the tops of the forest trees and every
building on the Henderson place, Mark instead guided the rapidly flying Snowbird far to
the left.
It skimmed the corner of the stable by a fraction of a foot, and Jack yelled:
"Look out!"
His cry made Mark even more nervous. The tall water-tank and windmill were right in
line. Before the young aviator could swerve the flying machine to escape the vane upon
the roof of the tower, and the long arms of the mill, they were right upon these things!
The fast-shooting Snowbird was jarred through all her members; but she tore loose. And
then, in erratic leaps and bounds, she kept on across the fields and woods towards Easton,
never rising very high, but occasionally sinking so that she trailed across the treetops,
threatening the whole party with death and the flying machine itself with destruction, at
every jump.
CHAPTER II
MARK HANGS ON
Professor Henderson and his adopted sons--Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson--had been in
many perilous situations together. Neither one nor the other was likely to display panic at
the present juncture, although the flying Snowbird was playing a gigantic game of
"leap-frog" through the air.
The professor had himself constructed many wonderful machines for transportation
through the air, under the ground, and both on and beneath the sea; and in them he and
his young comrades had voyaged afar.
Narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled, "Through the Air to the North Pole,"
was the bringing together of the two boys and the professor,--how the scientist and
Washington White rescued Jack and Mark after a train wreck, took them to the
professor's workshop, and made the lads his special care. In that workshop was built the
Electric Monarch, in which flying ship the party actually passed over that point far
beyond the Arctic Circle where the needle of the compass indicates the North Pole.
Later, in the submarine boat, the Porpoise, the professor, with his young assistants and
others, voyaged under the sea to the South Pole, the details of which voyage are related in
the second volume of the series, entitled "Under the Ocean to the South Pole."

In the third volume, "Five Thousand Miles Underground," is related the building of that
strange craft, the Flying Mermaid, and how the voyagers journeyed to the center of the
earth. The perils connected with this experience satisfied all of them, as far as adventure
went, for some time. Jack and Mark prepared for, and entered, the Universal Electrical
and Chemical College.
Before the first year of their college course was completed, however, Professor
Henderson, in partnership with a brother scientist, Professor Santell Roumann, projected
and carried through a marvelous campaign with the aid of Jack and Mark, which is
narrated in our fourth volume, entitled, "Through Space to Mars." In this book is told
how the projectile, Annihilator, was built and, the projectile being driven by the Etherium
motor, the party was transported to the planet Mars.
Later, because of some knowledge obtained from a Martian newspaper by Jack, they all
made a trip to the moon in search of a field of diamonds, and their adventures as related
in "Lost on the Moon" were of the most thrilling kind. The projectile brought them safely
home again and they had now, for some months, been quietly pursuing their usual
avocations.
The knowledge Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson had gained from textbooks, and much
from observation and the teachings of Professor Henderson, had aided the lads in the
building of the Snowbird. It was the first mechanism of importance that Jack and Mark
had ever completed, and they had been quite confident, before the flying machine was
shot from Mr. Henderson's catapult, that it was as near perfect as an untried aeroplane
could be.
"Hang on, Mark!" yelled Jack, as the great machine soared and pitched over the forest.
Her leaps were huge, and the shock each time she descended and rose again threatened to
shake the 'plane to bits. Mark swayed in his seat, clutching first