On a Torn-Away World Part 15

"All the more reason for our getting the _s...o...b..rd_ into flying shape," responded Jack. "Maybe we'll be able to escape the b.u.mp!"

"You can laugh," grumbled Mark. "But I don't like the look of that thing."

"Evidently the professor does not like it, either," agreed Jack. "See him now."

Professor Henderson was gazing first into the telescope and then drawing upon a paper before him. For several minutes he was thus engaged.

Finally he beckoned the boys to him.

"What do your eyes tell you that looks like?" he demanded of Jack and Mark, pointing to the outline he had drawn upon the paper.

The boys gazed on his drawing in surprise. It was Jack who exclaimed:

"Why, Professor, that looks a whole lot like an outline map of the Hudson Bay Territory, Canada, and Newfoundland. There's the mouth of the St. Lawrence, sure! What are you doing?"

"I have been drawing," said the gentleman, solemnly, "an outline of what I see upon that luminous body floating there in s.p.a.ce," and he pointed a trembling finger at the strange planet.

"Impossible!" cried Mark.

"I do not think I am losing my mind," said the professor, testily. "It remains, however, that the outline of certain bodies of water and of land upon that luminous globe seem to be the exact counterpart of land-bodies and water-bodies on the Earth."

"But what does it mean?" questioned Jack.

"If I knew that," grumbled the professor, returning to his instrument, "I should feel better satisfied."

That some strange--some really wonderful--change had taken place in their physical surroundings, too, there could be no doubt. But what it was the boys could not imagine. Of one thing they were sure, however: The law of gravitation had been partly overcome. And a second fact was discernible: There was a surprising rarity to the air they breathed, and had been since the fall of volcanic ashes had ceased.

In lifting the heavier tools they handled it was noticeable that they seemed lighter. And Andy Sudds surprised them all, when it became necessary to roll a log out of the way of the flying machine, by seizing the heavy timber and lifting it with the ease with which one might lift a small sapling.

"We've all become strong men--professional strong men," gasped Jack.

"Wash is the champion jumper and Andy beats old Samson, I declare!

What do you make of it, Mark?"

"If the professor cannot explain it, don't expect me to do so," returned his chum.

"It am de seriousest question dat has ebber come befo' us," declared Was.h.i.+ngton, looking wondrous wise. "Disher jumpin' has always been in ma fambly, howebber. We had some great jumpers down Souf befo' de War."

The boys hurried to finish the repairs. It was some time after midnight when they p.r.o.nounced the _s...o...b..rd_ again ready for flight.

The professor had to be urged more than once to leave his telescope, however; and then he insisted upon setting it up on the deck of the flying machine. He would not discuss the situation at all; but his serious visage and his anxious manner betrayed to them all that he was disturbed indeed by the strange, pale planet he had so closely examined.

Mr. Roebach turned loose his dogs again and climbed gingerly aboard the flying machine.

"I've never been up in the air," he said, "and I must admit that I am somewhat more afraid of a flying machine than I am of an earthquake."

"No more earthquakes in mine, thank you!" cried Jack. "I'd rather sail on a kite than go through what we did yesterday."

They had studied the chart and laid the course for Aleukan without any difficulty. Now Jack strapped himself into the operator's seat and the others took their places, Was.h.i.+ngton White stowing his rooster carefully amids.h.i.+ps as he had before.

Jack started the motor and the _s...o...b..rd_ began to quiver throughout her frame. He touched the lever by which the propellers were started. With a whir and a bound the flying machine left the earth.

Never had it sprung into the air so quickly before. It shot up at a sharp incline and was over the tree-tops in a breath. The indicator registered eighty miles an hour before the plateau was behind them.

Then the pointer whirled to ninety--to a hundred--to a hundred fifteen miles an hour, and both Jack, in the pilot's seat, and the others gasped for breath.

Faster than when shot out of Professor Henderson's catapult the _s...o...b..rd_ winged her way into the northwest. Jack managed to keep her on an even keel. But he had the same feeling that he would have had, had he been hanging to the bit of a runaway horse.

Indeed, the _s...o...b..rd_ was practically out of his control.

CHAPTER XV

A PLUNGE TO THE ICE

Jack Darrow was a youth less likely to be panic-stricken than his chum; but just as Mark Sampson had lost his head for a few minutes on the occasion when the _s...o...b..rd_ was tried out, so Jack was fl.u.s.tered now.

The flying machine shot up at such a tangent, and so swiftly, that he was both amazed and frightened. The speed indicator showed a terrific pace within a few seconds, and when Jack first tried to reduce the speed he learned that the mechanism acted in a manner entirely different than ever before.

The motor made more revolutions a minute than she was supposed to make when pressed to the very highest speed. When he had raised the bow of the flying machine at the start she had shot up almost perpendicularly into the air. He was afraid she was going to turn a back somersault.

As he depressed the planes he found that it took much more depression to bring the _s...o...b..rd_ down to even keel. And the rapidity with which they left the ground and soared upward was in itself enough to shake Jack's coolness. Suddenly (being furnished with the professor's patented ear-tabs) he heard that gentleman calling to him from below:

"Get back to the five-hundred-foot level--quick!"

Light as his head had become, and confused as he was, Jack realized what these words meant, and he knew enough to obey without question.

He brought the _s...o...b..rd_ down the air-ways on a long slant and at a swift pace. He realized that, as they descended, he was able to breathe more easily and his head stopped ringing. For some moments he had felt like an intoxicated person in the vastly rarified plane of the upper ether.

The professor staggered to the young operator's side.

"Danger! Danger above, boy!" he gasped. "We cannot cross these mountains while--while the air is so thin."

"But we need not cross them to reach Aleukan?" suggested Jack, speaking with some difficulty himself. There was a pain in the region of his lungs and he saw that Professor Henderson was very pale.

"That is a fact," panted the professor. "Descend, Jack. Make it two hundred feet. Be careful!"

For as the youth depressed the planes again the ground beneath seemed to fairly leap up to meet them.

"What do you know about that?" gasped the young aviator. "She--she doesn't work at all like she used to."

"Less attraction," declared the scientist.

"What do you mean, sir?" cried Jack. "Has the law of gravitation lost its power over us--and over the flying machine?"

"There is a difference--a great difference," proclaimed Professor Henderson. "The power of attraction is lessened mightily."

"What does it mean? What _can_ it mean?" murmured the disturbed youth.

"I suspect--I fear--"