The Lost City | Page 5

balloon-shaped cloud, modulating its pace so as to maintain their relative position fairly well.
"Take note how it progresses,--by fits and starts, as it were," observed Featherwit, now in his glory, eyes asparkle and muscles aquiver, hair bristling as though full of electricity, face glowing with almost painful interest, as those shifting scenes were for ever imprinted upon his brain.
"Sort of a hop, step, and jump, and that's a fact," agreed Waldo, now a bit more at his ease since that awful sense of suffocation was lacking. "I thought all cyclones--"
"Tornado, my DEAR boy!" expostulated the professor.
"I thought they all went in holy hurry, like they were sent for and had mighty little time in which to get there. But this one,--see how it stops to dance a jig and bore holes in the earth!"
"Another exception to the general rule, which is as you say," admitted the professor. "Different tornadoes have been timed as moving from twelve to seventy miles an hour, one passing a given point in half a score of seconds, at another time being registered as fully half an hour in clearing a single section.
"Take the destructive storm at Mount Carmel, Illinois, in June of '77. That made progress at the rate of thirty-four miles an hour, yet its force was so mighty that it tore away the spire, vane, and heavy gilded ball of the Methodist church, and kept it in air over a distance of fifteen miles.
"Still later was the Texas tornado, doing its awful work at the rate of more than sixty miles an hour; while that which swept through Frankfort, Kansas, on May 17, 1896, was fully a half-hour in crossing a half-mile stretch of bottom-land adjoining the Vermillion River, pausing in its dizzy waltz upon a single spot for long minutes at a time."
"Couldn't have been much left when it got through dancing, if that storm was anything like this one," declared Waldo, shivering a bit as he watched the awful destruction being wrought right before their fascinated eyes.
Trees were twisted off and doubled up like blades of dry grass. Mighty rocks were torn apart from the rugged hills, and huge boulders were tossed into air as though composed of paper. And over all ascended the horrid roar of ruin beyond description, while from that misshapen balloon-cloud, with its flattened top, the electric fluid shone and flashed, now in great sheets as of flame, then in vicious spurts and darts as though innumerable snakes of fire had been turned loose by the winds.
Still the aerial demon bored its almost sluggish course straight towards the northwest, in this, as in all else, seemingly bent on proving itself the exception to all exceptions as Professor Featherwit declared.
The savant himself was now in his glory, holding the tiller between arm and side, the better to manipulate his hand-camera, with which he was taking repeated snap-shots for future development and reference.
Truly, as he more than once declared, mortal man never had, nor mortal man ever would have, such a glorious opportunity for recording the varying phases of nature in travail as was now vouchsafed themselves.
"Just think of it, lads!" he cried, almost beside himself with enthusiasm. "This alone will be sufficient to carry our names ringing through all time down the corridors of undying fame! This alone would be more than enough to--Look pleasant, please!"
In spite of that awful vision so perilously close before them, and the natural uncertainty which attended such a reckless venture, Waldo could not repress a chuckle at that comical conclusion, so frequently used towards himself when their uncle was coaxing them to pose before his pet camera.
"Is it--surely this is not safe, uncle Phaeton?" ventured Bruno, as another retrograde gust of air smote their apparently frail conveyance with sudden force.
"Let's call it a day's work, and knock off," chimed in Waldo. "If the blamed thing should take a notion to balk, and rear back on its haunches, where'd we come out at?"
Professor Featherwit made an impatient gesture by way of answer. Speech just then would have been worse than useless, for that tremendous roaring, crashing, thundering of all sounds, seemed to fall back and envelop the air-ship as with a pall.
A shower of sand and fine debris poured over and around them, filling ears and mouths, and blinding eyes for the moment, forcing the brothers closer to the floor of the aerostat, and even compelling the eager professor to remit his taking of notes for future generations.
Then, thin and reed-like, yet serving to pierce that temporary obscurity and horrible jangle of outer sounds, came the voice of their relative:
"Fear not, my children! The Lord is our shield, and so long as he willeth, just so long shall we--Ha! didn't I tell ye so?"
For the blinding veil was torn away, and once again