The Lost City by Jr. Joseph E. Badger (good summer reads TXT) 📕

strength and energy both of body

and of mind now came back to the air-voyagers, and after a little

they could lift their heads to peer around them with growing

wonder and curiosity.

 

There was little room left for doubting the wondrous truth, and

yet belief was past their powers during those first few minutes.

 

All around them whirled and sped those maddened winds, curling

and twisting, rising and falling, mixing in and out as though

some unknown power might be weaving the web of destiny.

 

Now dull, now brilliant, never twice the same, but ever changing

in colour as in shape, while stripes and zigzags of lightning

played here and there with terrifying menace, those walls of wind

held an awfully fascinating power for uncle and nephews.

 

From every side came deadened sounds which could bear but a

single interpretation: the tornado was still in rapid motion,

was still tearing and rending, crushing and battering, leaving

dire destruction and ruin to mark its advance, and these were the

sounds that recorded its ugly work.

 

In goodly measure revived by the compressed air, which was

regulated in flow to suit his requirements by a device of his

own, Professor Featherwit now looked around with something of his

wonted animation, heedless of his own peril for the moment, so

great was his interest in this marvellous happening.

 

So utterly incredible was it all that, during those first few

minutes of rallying powers, he dared not express the belief which

was shaping itself, gazing around in quest of still further

confirmation.

 

He took note of the windy walls about their vessel, rising upward

for many yards, irregular in shape and curvature here and there,

but retaining the general semblance of a tube with flaring top.

He peered over the edge of the basket, to draw back dizzily as he

saw naught but yeasty, boiling, seething clouds below,—a

veritable air-cushion which had served to save the pet of his

brain from utter destruction at the time of falling within—

 

Yes, there was no longer room for doubt,—they were actually

inside the distorted balloon, so dreaded by all residents of the

tornado belt!

 

“What is it, uncle?” huskily asked Bruno, likewise rallying under

that beneficial influence. “Where are we now?”

 

“Where I’m wishing mighty hard we wasn’t, anyhow!” contributed

Waldo, with something of his usual energy, although, judging from

his face and eyes, the youngster had suffered more severely than

either of his comrades in peril.

 

Professor Featherwit broke into a queerly sounding laugh, as he

waved his free hand in exultation before speaking:

 

“Where no living being ever was before us, my lads,—riding the

tornado like a—ugh!”

 

The air-ship gave an awkward lurch just then, and down went the

little professor to thump his head heavily against one corner of

the locker. Swaying drunkenly from side to side, then tossing up

and down, turning in unison with those fiercely whirling clouds,

the aeromotor seemed at the point of wreck and ruin.

 

Desperately the trio clung to the life-lines, clenching teeth

upon the life-giving tubes as that terrible pressure increased so

much that it seemed impossible for the human frame to longer

resist.

 

Fortunately that ordeal did not long endure, and again relief

came to those so sorely oppressed. A brief gasping, sighing,

stretching as the aerostat resumed its level position, merely

rocking easily within that partial vacuum, and then Waldo huskily

suggested:

 

“Looks like the blame thing was sick at the stomach!”

 

No doubt this was meant for a feeble attempt at joking, but

Professor Featherwit took it for earnest, and made quick reply:

 

“That is precisely the case, my dear lad, and I am greatly joyed

to find that you are not so badly frightened but that you can

assist me in taking notes of this wondrous happening. To think

that we are the ones selected for—”

 

“I say, uncle Phaeton.”

 

“Well, my lad?”

 

“If this thing is really sick at the stomach, when will it erupt?

I’d give a dollar and a half to just get out o’ this, science or

no science, notes or no notes at all!”

 

“Patience, my dear boy,” gravely spoke the little man of science,

busily studying those eddying currents like one seeking a fairly

safe method of extrication from peril. “It may come far sooner

than you think, and with results more disastrous than feeble

words can tell. We surely are a burden such as a tornado must be

wholly unaccustomed to, and I really believe these alternations

are spasmodic efforts of the cloud itself to vomit us forth;

hence you were nearer right than you thought in making use of

that expression.”

 

Just then came a rush of icy air, and Bruno pantingly cried:

 

“I’m swelling up—like Aesop’s—bullfrog!”

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE PROFESSOR’S LITTLE EXPERIMENT.

 

Again those involuntary riders of the tornado were tossed

violently to and fro in their seemingly frail ship, while the

balloon itself appeared threatened with instant dissolution,

those eddying currents growing broken and far less regular in

action, while the fierce tumult grew in sound and volume a

thousandfold.

 

All around the air-ship now showed ugly debris, limbs and boughs

and even whole trunks of giant trees being whirled upward and

outward, each moment menacing the vessel with total destruction,

yet as frequently vanishing without infringing seriously upon

their curious prison.

 

Sand and dirt and fragments of shattered rock whistled by in an

apparently unending shower, only with reversed motion, flying

upward in place of shooting downward to earth itself.

 

Speech was utterly impossible under the circumstances, and the

fate-tossed voyagers could only cling fast to the hand-rail, and

hold those precious air-tubes in readiness for the worst.

 

Never before had either of the trio heard such a deafening crash

and uproar, and little wonder if they thought this surely must

herald the crack of doom!

 

The tornado seemed to reel backward, as though repulsed by an

immovable obstacle, and then, while the din was a bit less

deafening, Professor Featherwit contrived to make himself heard,

through screaming at the top of his voice:

 

“The mountain range, I fancy! It’s a battle to the—”

 

That sentence was perforce left incomplete, since the storm-demon

gave another mad plunge to renew the battle, bringing on a

repetition of that drunken swaying so upsetting to both mind and

body.

 

A few seconds thus, then the tornado conquered, or else rose

higher in partial defeat, for their progress was resumed, and

comparative quiet reigned again.

 

The higher clouds curved backward, affording a wider view of the

heavens far above, and, as all eyes turned instinctively in that

direction, Bruno involuntarily exclaimed:

 

“Still daylight! I thought—how long has this lasted?”

 

“It’s the middle o’ next week; no less!” positively affirmed his

brother. “Don’t tell me! We’ve been in here a solid month, by

my watch!”

 

Instead of making reply such as might have been expected from one

of his mathematical exactness, Professor Featherwit gave a cry of

dismay, while hurriedly moving to and fro in their contracted

quarters, for the time being forgetful of all other than this,

his great loss.

 

“What is it, uncle Phaeton?” asked Bruno, rising to his knees in

natural anxiety. “Surely nothing worse than has already happened

to us?”

 

“Worse? What could be worse than losing for ever—the camera,

boys; where is the camera, I ask you?”

 

Certainly not where the professor was looking, and even as he

roared forth that query, his heart told him the sad truth; past

doubting, the instrument upon whose aid he relied to place upon

record these marvellous facts, so that all mankind might see and

have full faith, was lost,—thrown from the aerostat, to meet

with certain destruction, when the vessel first came within the

tornado’s terrible clutch.

 

“Gone,—lost,—and now who will believe that we ever—oh, this is

enough to crush one’s very soul!” mourned the professor, throwing

up his hands, and sinking back to the floor of the flying-machine

in a limp and disheartened heap for the time being.

 

Neither Bruno nor Waldo could fully appreciate that grief, since

thoughts and care for self were still the ruling passion with

both; but once more they were called upon to do battle with the

swaying of the winds, and once again were they saved only through

that life-giving cylinder of compressed air.

 

Presently, the heart-broken professor rallied, as was his nature,

and, with a visible effort putting his great loss behind him,

endeavoured to cheer up his comrades in peril.

 

“So far we have passed through all danger without receiving

material injury,—to ourselves, I mean,—and surely it is not too

much to hope for eventual escape?” he said, earnestly, pressing

the hands of his nephews, by way of additional encouragement.

 

“Yes,” hesitated Bruno, with an involuntary shiver, as he glanced

around them upon those furiously boiling clouds, then cast an eye

upward, towards yonder clear sky. “Yes, but—in what manner?”

 

“What’ll we do when the cyclone goes bu’st?” cut in Waldo, with

disagreeable bluntness. “It can’t go on for ever, and when it

splits up,—where will we be then?”

 

“I wish it lay within my power to give you full assurance on all

points, my dear boys,” the professor made reply. “I only wish I

could ensure your perfect safety by giving my own poor remnant of

life—”

 

“No, no, uncle Phaeton!” cried the brothers, in a single breath.

 

“How cheerfully, if I only might!” insisted the professor, his

homely face wearing an expression of blended regret and unbounded

affection. “But for me you would never have encountered these

perils, nor ever—”

 

Again he was interrupted by the brothers, and forced to leave

that regret unspoken to the end.

 

“Only for you, uncle Phaeton, what would have become of us when

we were left without parents, home, fortune? Only for you,

taking us in and treating us as though of your own flesh and

blood—”

 

“As you are, my good lads! Let it pass, then, but I must say

that I do wish—well, well, let it pass, then!”

 

A brief silence, which was spent in gripping hands and with eyes

giving pledges of love and undying confidence; then Professor

Featherwit spoke again, in an entirely different vein.

 

“If nothing else, we have exploded one fallacy which has never

met with contradiction, so far as my poor knowledge goes.”

 

“And that is—what, uncle Phaeton?”

 

“Observe, my lads,” with a wave of his hand towards those

whirling walls, and then making a downward motion. “You see that

we are floating in a partial vacuum, yet where there is air

sufficient to preserve life under difficulties. And by looking

downward—careful that you don’t fall overboard through

dizziness, though!”

 

“Looks as though we were floating just above a bed of ugly wind!”

declared Waldo, after taking a look below.

 

“Precisely; the aerostat rests upon an air-cushion amply solid

enough to sustain far more than our combined weight. But what is

the generally accepted view, my dear boys?”

 

“You tell, for we don’t know how,” frankly acknowledged Waldo.

 

“Thanks. Yet you are now far wiser than all of the scientists

who have written and published whole libraries concerning these

storm formations, but whose fallacies we are now fully prepared

to explode, once for all, through knowledge won by personal

investigation—ahem!”

 

Strange though it may appear, the professor forgot the mutual

danger by which they were surrounded, and trotted off on his

hobby-horse in blissful pride, paying no attention to the hideous

uproar going on, only raising his voice higher to make it heard

by his youthful auditors.

 

“The common belief is that, while these tornadoes