On a Torn-Away World | Page 5

hang on! His friends depended upon him to control the machine and to save them from destruction, and he would not be found wanting.
One lever after another he gripped and tried. It was one controlling the rising power that was fouled. He learned this in a moment. He sought to move it to and fro in its socket and could not do so. He had overlooked this lever before.
Again the Snowbird dashed herself from a height of five hundred feet toward the earth.
They still flew over the forest. The tops of the trees intervened, and Mark managed to counteract the plunge before the prow of the machine burst through the treetops. She rose again, and using both hands, Mark jerked the wheel stick into place.
At once the flying machine responded to the change. She rode straight on, slightly rising as he had pointed her, and Mark dared touch the motor switch again. Instantly the machine speeded ahead.
"Hurrah for Mark!" shrieked Jack. "He's pulled us through."
"He has indeed," agreed the professor, and they settled into their seats and gave attention to the working of the apparatus. Mark now had the Snowbird well under control.
Jack changed places with his chum and managed the Snowbird equally well. At his touch she darted upward at a long slant until the altimeter registered two thousand feet above the sea. And the sea was actually below them, for Jack had guided the flying machine away out from the land.
"Boys," said Professor Henderson, quietly, "you have done well--remarkably well. I am certainly proud of you. Some day the people of the United States will be proud of you. I am sure that the inventor's instinct and the scientist's indefatigable energy are characteristics you both possess."
"That's praise indeed!" exclaimed Jack, smiling at his chum. "When the professor says we've won out, I don't care what anybody else says."
"Do you think the Snowbird is fit for long-distance travel?" asked Mark of Professor Henderson, now displaying more eagerness than before.
"I do indeed. I think you have a most excellent flying machine. I would not hesitate to start for San Francisco in her."
"Or farther?" asked Jack.
"Certainly."
"Across the ocean?" queried Mark, quickly.
"I do not see why any one could not take a trip to the other side of the Atlantic in your 'plane," replied the professor. "With proper precautions, of course."
They reached the land and came safely to rest before the hangar without further accident. The professor was delighted with the working of his catapult and at once made ready to call the attention of the Navy Department to his improvement in the means of launching an airship from the deck of a vessel. Ere he had written to the Department, however, he and his young friends were suddenly made interested in a scheme that was broached by letter to Professor Henderson from a fellow-savant, Dr. Artemus Todd, of the West Baden University.
Professor Henderson and Dr. Todd had often exchanged courtesies; but the university doctor was mainly interested in medical subjects, while Mr. Henderson delved more in the mysteries of astronomy and practical mechanics.
The doctor's letter to Professor Henderson read as follows:
"Dear Professor:
"I am urged to write to you again because of something that has recently come to my knowledge regarding a subject we once discussed. As you know, for some years past I have been investigating not the cause of aphasia and kindred mental troubles (for we know the condition is brought about by a clot of blood upon the brain), but the means of quickly and surely overcoming the condition and bringing the unfortunate victim of this disorder back to his normal state. In our age, when mental and nervous diseases are so rapidly increasing, aphasia victims are becoming more common. Scarcely a hospital in the land that does not have its quota of such patients under treatment--patients who, in many cases, have completely forgotten who and what they are and have assumed a totally different identity from that they began life with."
"We know that, in some cases, hypnotism has benefited the aphasia and amnesia victim. His condition is not like that of the mentally feeble; he has merely lost his memory of what and who he previously was. Believing that all disease, of whatsoever nature, can be safely treated only through the blood, this ill to which human flesh is heir particularly must be treated in that way, for we know that a stagnant state of the blood in one spot, at least, is the cause of the patient's malady. Therefore I have been experimenting botanically to discover a remedium for the state in question--something that will act swiftly upon the blood, and directly dissipate such a clot as is spoken of above."
"My dear Professor! I can announce with joy that this remedium is discovered. I obtained a specimen