On a Torn-Away World | Page 9

they dispensed with the professor's catapult, for it would be necessary to have the trucks attached to the aeroplane to enable her to start properly from any point on which they might land. The workshop and plant in general were left in charge of a watchman and caretaker, and only this man was present when Jack took his place in the controller's seat and Mark started the powerful motor and clambered aboard.
The craft ran across the field, at first slowly and then more rapidly as Jack increased the speed. The flying machine began to lift almost immediately.
"Hurrah!" shouted the irrepressible Jack. "We're off!"
"About nor-norwest is the course, Jack," cried Mark Sampson, likewise inspired by the flight of the Snowbird.
As for Washington White, he gazed down to the dusky earth below them and his eyes rolled.
"Gollyation!" he muttered. "If Buttsy should fall down dere, he'd suah jounce himself some; wouldn't he?"
CHAPTER IV
"WHO GOES THERE?"
With the moonlight lying like a benediction over the fields and forests of Maine, the Snowbird, her motor humming like a huge bumble-bee, and her propellers and controls working in perfect order, swept on her course into the northwest. The lights of Easton, ten miles from their home, melted into the earth-shadow behind the sky-voyagers within the first hour of the sure-to-be eventful journey.
Jack Darrow did not force the pace of the flying machine. They had a long and trying flight before them. The machine as a whole had been tried out only two or three times during the few days that had elapsed since she was completed and this present expedition had been planned. These short flights had served merely to put the parts in good working trim; but the lad knew better than to make the pace that of top-speed from the start.
He wanted her to "warm up." He knew that the Snowbird could make one hundred twenty-five miles an hour. But such speed was likely to shake something loose and cripple the mechanism.
A flight of seventy or eighty miles an hour would bring them well into Canada by noon of the next day. They would have to there descend at, or near, some town, and report themselves and the nature of their flight to the authorities. This was to be done as a precaution in case they had a breakdown somewhere in crossing British possessions. A passport would then aid them if they were obliged to call upon the authorities in the heart of Canada for aid.
But at present none of these things bothered the party much. Sudds and the professor slept as though they were in their beds at home. The old hunter could sleep anywhere, and awake instantly with all his faculties about him. And the scientist slept profoundly because his body was exhausted.
Under the brilliant moon the Snowbird swung along the air-way like a veritable bird. Jack increased the revolutions of the propellers a trifle and the ship responded like a spirited horse to the spur. She darted ahead at a ninety mile speed and Washington White emitted a mournful groan.
"What's the matter with you now, Wash?" shouted Mark, for they all wore ear-tabs and had to shout to make one another hear.
"Oh, lawsy-massy on us!" groaned Wash. "I'se got sech a misery, Massa Mark, I dunno but ma time has camed."
"What time has come?" demanded Mark, without much sympathy. "It'll be time for you to hustle and get us something to eat before long."
"For de goodness gracious Agnes' sake!" gasped the negro, "yo' suahly ain't a-gwine ter dribe me ter wo'k up in disher flyin' contraption? Dat would suah be cruelty ter animiles, boy--it. suah would!"
"We've got to eat, Wash," said Jack, chuckling, "and you are steward and cook of this craft."
"Gollyation! did I ship fo' sech wo'k? I nebber knowed it. It does seem to me dat de consanguinity ob de 'casion done call fo' notting but de quietest kind o' verisimilitude. De qualmishness dat arises in de interiorness of ma diaphragm ev'ry time I circumnavigates erbout in disher flyin' ship makes me wanter express mahself in de mos' scatterin' kin' ob er way--I hopes you gits ma meanin' clear?"
Jack was laughing so that he could not speak, but Mark managed to say:
"You mean that the motion of the aeroplane gives you a feeling of mal de mer?"
"Dat's wot I done said," Wash replied, seriously. "I nebber in ma life felt so mal-der-merry as I do at dis present onauspicious 'casion; an' if dat mal don't stop merryin' purty quick, I suah shall be--ugh!--sick ter ma stummick!"
This wail fairly convulsed Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson; but they knew that if Wash paid more attention to his duties and thought less about his own situation he would be better off. Mark insisted on his going at once into the tiny, covered