Part 15 (2/2)

”Perhaps,” admitted Tom. ”Anyhow, we're well rid of our enemies--at least for a time. They can't follow us up in the air.” He turned another lever and the RED CLOUD shot forward at increased speed.

”Maybe Andy will race us,” suggested Ned.

”I'm not afraid of anything his airs.h.i.+p can do,” declared Tom. ”I don't believe it will even get up off the ground, though he did make a short flight before he packed up to follow us. It's a wonder he wouldn't think of something himself, instead of trying to pattern after some one else. He tried to beat me in building a speeding automobile, and now he wants to get ahead of me in an airs.h.i.+p. Well, let him try. I'll beat him out, just as I've done before.”

They were now over the outskirts of Seattle, flying along about a thousand feet high, and they could dimly make out curious crowds gazing up at them. The throng that had been around the airs.h.i.+p shed had disappeared from view behind a little hill, and, of course, the man with the black mustache was no longer visible, but Tom felt as if his sinister eyes were still gazing upward, seeking to discern the occupants of the airs.h.i.+p.

”We're well on our way now,” observed Ned, after a while, during which interval he and Tom had inspected the machinery, and found it working satisfactorily.

”Yes, and the RED CLOUD is doing better than she ever did before,”

said Tom. ”I think it did her good to take her apart and put her together again. It sort of freshened her up. This machine is my special pride. I hope nothing happens to her on this journey to the caves of ice.”

”If my theory is borne out, we will have to be careful not to get caught in the crush of ice, as it makes its way toward the south,”

spoke Mr. Parker with an air as if he almost wished such a thing to happen, that he might be vindicated.

”Oh, we'll take good care that the RED CLOUD isn't nipped between two bergs,” Tom declared.

But he little knew of the dire fate that was to overtake the RED CLOUD, and how close a call they were to have for their very lives.

”No matter what care you exercise, you cannot overcome the awful power of the grinding ice,” declared the gloomy scientist. ”I predict that we will see most wonderful and terrifying sights.”

”Bless my hatband!” cried Mr. Damon, ”don't say such dreadful things, Parker my dear man! Be more cheerful; can't you?”

”Science cannot be cheerful when foretelling events of a dire nature,” was the response. ”I would not do my duty if I did not hold to my theories.”

”Well, just hold to them a little more closely,” suggested Mr.

Damon. ”Don't tell them to us so often, and have them get on our nerves, Parker, my dear man. Bless my nail-file! be more cheerful.

And that reminds me, when are we going to have dinner, Tom?”

”Whenever you want it, Mr. Damon. Are you going to act as cook again?”

”I think I will, and I'll just go to the galley now, and see about getting a meal. It will take my mind off the dreadful things Mr.

Parker says.”

But if the gloomy scientific man heard this little ”dig” he did not respond to it. He was busy jotting down figures on a piece of paper, multiplying and dividing them to get at some result in a complicated problem he was working on, regarding the power of an iceberg in proportion to its size, to exert a lateral pressure when sliding down a grade of fifteen per cent.

Mr. Damon got an early dinner, as they had breakfasted almost at dawn that morning, in order to get a good start. The meal was much enjoyed, and to Abe Abercrombie was quite a novelty, for he had never before partaken of food so high up in the air, the barograph of the RED CLOUD showing an elevation of a little over twelve thousand feet.

”It's certainly great,” the old miner observed, as he looked down toward the earth below them, stretched out like some great relief map. ”It sure is wonderful an' some scrumptious! I never thought I'd be ridin' one of these critters. But they're th' only thing t' git t' this hidden valley with. We might prospect around for a year, and be driven back by the Indians and Eskimos a dozen times. But with this we can go over their heads, and get all the gold we want.”

”Is there enough to give every one all he wants?” asked Tom, with a quizzical smile. ”I don't know that I ever had enough.”

”Me either,” added Ned Newton.

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