Kitabı oku: «The Boy Scouts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XIII
A STRANGE MEETING IN THE AIR
“Hiram, it’s only fair that you stay with us for a while this afternoon,” Rob mentioned as they were leaving the table.
“Oh! I expected to put in say an hour or so with you, Rob; and then later on I hope you’ll make your way over to the aviation field, where you’ll just as like as not find me hanging around, still picking up points.”
“That’s a bargain, then, is it?” demanded Rob.
“Just as you say,” Hiram declared. “I guess now I c’n hit on the fust thing our chum Andy here’ll be wantin’ to do. I’ve been watchin’ him stare at that old arm every time she rose up with the car; and I see we’re headin’ that way right fast now.”
“Yes, it’s a good idea to take that trip the first thing,” said Rob, “because you get a comprehensive idea of the lay of the land that serves you better than any map you can buy. They don’t stay up very long, though, because there are more dollars waiting to be picked up from the crowd that’s always in line to occupy the car.”
“Three hundred and sixty-five feet up is going some,” muttered Hiram. “I hope now they don’t have any accident to the machinery while we’re taking our look. I must see how they work this trick; it ought to be interesting.”
He would have started to carry out this intention then and there only that Andy held on to his coat and would not let go.
“The machinery part can keep, Hiram,” the impatient one declared. “Some time when you’re alone poke around all you like; but my tastes run in another channel. You’re like the geologists, with your nose pointed toward the ground all the while; I’m built more after the style of the astronomers who keep looking up and see the glories of the firmament that beat the fossils all hollow.”
“H’m! you don’t say!” was all the remark Hiram made, but it contained considerable skepticism concerning Andy’s sweeping assertion.
They fell in line, and were fortunate enough to be able to get aboard without having to wait, as they might have done later in the afternoon.
“This thing must have cost a raft of money to build; it beats the old Ferris Wheel to pieces, I should think; and that was a wonder in its day.”
“Yes,” said Andy, “but think of the money they must take in, running it all the time from February up to December. Why, I should think they’d have millions of passengers in that time, and at so much a head it would be like a regular gold mine.”
About that time the car was closed and locked, so that by no mischance could any reckless passenger be tempted to jump when it was high in the air, so as to accomplish a spectacular suicide.
“And they’ve got the windows screened in, too,” remarked Andy.
“They knew you were coming, I kinder guess, and wanted to make sure you wouldn’t lose your head up there so as to fall overboard,” Hiram told him.
The car was crowded, so that they could not see who all of their fellow passengers were. There was also considerable shouting going on, some of those aboard bidding farewell to friends who had been unable to make that trip, as though they fully expected to keep right on going up, once they got started toward the blue heavens overhead, until they landed in Glory.
“Here she goes!” announced Andy, eagerly, as the car was felt to vibrate.
With that they left the ground and commenced to ascend. The motion was fairly steady, as the weights on the other end of the great seesaw had been adjusted to correspond to the number of those in the car, so that after all the engine did not have a great deal of hard work to do in lifting that load.
“Whee! I only hope none of the balancing weight slips off!” said Hiram, who appeared to be rather nervous.
“I’m surprised at you, Hiram,” remarked Rob; “it seems queer for a fellow who aspires to be a bold air pilot some of these fine days, and who has even been up several times as high as three thousand feet, to be shivering with fear now, when at the most we’re only going to get three hundred odd feet from the ground.”
“Oh, well, that’s a horse of a different color,” Hiram explained; “when you’re up in an aëroplane it depends on your own self whether you come down safe, or have an accident. In this case you haven’t got a single thing to do with it, but just trust to a mechanic, who may be as reliable as they make ’em, but could make a mistake just once. That’s what gets my goat; my efficiency don’t count for a cent in this game.”
“Well, there is something in that,” Rob admitted; “but let’s try to find a place and look out as we keep on rising. Already the view seems to be getting pretty fine.”
There was more or less talking and laughing and all that in the car, for when there happens to be a spice of danger connected with any of these amusements many people become half hysterical.
The view was, indeed, becoming grand, as Rob had said, and both boys were soon copying Andy, who was staring first one way and then another, as sea and shore began to be spread out before him like a Mercator’s chart.
Although the huge arm of the giant Aëroscope had by no means reached the upper limit of its sweep, the great buildings lying below had the appearance of squatty “ant-heaps,” as Andy termed them; and the crowds that swarmed many of the walks of the Exposition looked so minute that it was hard to believe they were human beings.
All at once, the working arm of the big seesaw stopped with a rude jerk that caused a number of girls aboard to give vent to cries of alarm. Even strong men had a nervous look on their faces, Rob immediately noticed.
“What’s this mean?” demanded Hiram, laying a hand on Rob’s arm.
“We haven’t reached the highest sweep yet, I’m dead sure,” complained Andy, in a petulant tone, just as though he believed the management meant to cheat those aboard out of the full benefit of their money. “We want a better view than this. All the others went to the top, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t, too.”
“Rob, this stop wasn’t meant, was it?” demanded Hiram, insistent as usual.
“Don’t talk so loud, Hiram,” he was advised. “You’ll only frighten those girls all the more if they happen to hear you. No, I don’t believe it was intended that we stop this far up, and with such a bump, too.”
“But is there any real danger of an accident? I wouldn’t care so much if I had my new-fangled parachute with me, and could only get outside; for even if the old car did drop, I’d be able to sail down like a feather.”
“Danger – of course not a bit,” Rob told him sternly. “You don’t suppose the managers of this big Exposition would allow a mechanical affair like this Aëroscope to be run day after day unless the owners had made it absolutely accident proof. Just hold your horses and we’ll soon be moving again.”
“Yes, and Hiram,” said Andy just then, “don’t put yourself on a par with those silly screeching girls over there, who are hugging each other so. Poor things, they don’t know any better! But you’re a scout, Hiram, and have been taught never to show the white feather. Brace up! You’re wearing khaki right now, and for the sake of the cloth show yourself a man!”
That brought Hiram to a realization of the fact that he was indeed hardly proving himself a worthy scout. He pretended to be indifferent.
“Shucks! who cares?” he exclaimed. “I do wish them girls’d let up on their racket; it gets on a feller’s nerves to hear ’em shriek that way.”
“Well, I know what ails the old thing!” suddenly announced Andy, with a grin on his face that told how his love for joking exceeded any faint feeling of alarm that may have seized upon him.
“Let’s hear it, then!” demanded Rob.
“Oh, if you had only guessed it before we started it would have saved lots of bother!” called out Hiram.
“They miscalculated the weight, you see!” continued Andy. “Some fellows are so deceptive in their looks. Now right across from us there’s a fat boy with his back turned this way, and staring hard out of the window. I bet you they figured wrong on him, and that’s why we’ve got stuck up here four-fifths of the way to the top.”
The other two now looked, and owing to some of the passengers in the car crowding together an opening was made like a little lane. At the end of this they discovered, just as Andy had said, an exceedingly fat boy occupying more than his share of space, with his chubby legs braced under him, and his face pressed against the heavy wire netting that covered the open windows.
Rob stared, and looked more closely. He half opened his mouth to make some sort of remark, and then as though seized with a second thought, refrained.
“Do you really think so, Andy?” asked Hiram, in a half-awed way, as though he actually took some stock in the ridiculous assertion made by the other.
“Well, tell me a better explanation if you know one!” demanded Andy, which was a queer way of clinching an argument.
“Then the quickest way to mend matters would be for you to go over there and toss the heavy-weight overboard, don’t you think, Andy?” asked Rob, entering into the spirit of the joke, especially since he really believed he held the whip-hand over the fun-loving Andy.
“Huh! think so, do you, Rob?” said Andy, making out as though he felt in a fighting humor. “Well, now, perhaps that would be the easiest way to fix things. I’ve got a good mind to try it. Watch my smoke, Hiram!”
With that he actually squared himself, rolled up the sleeves of his coat, and even started across the car. Hiram turned pale. He seemed to forget that there was no possible way in which any one inside the car could manage to effect their escape so long as the great arm of the giant seesaw was elevated in the air.
“Rob, are you going to stand for that?” he burst out.
“No use trying to stop him now, Hiram,” he was told.
“But look at him squaring off, Rob, like he really means it!” cried Hiram. “It would be just like Andy, he’s so rash, you know, to get us all arrested. What if he did knock that fat boy off the car! Why, Rob, don’t you see the sudden jolt when the weight was changed might make us fly up, and bring about a catastrophe?”
“That’s so, it might, Hiram,” said Rob, trying hard to keep a straight face.
“Oh! it’s too late to stop him, Rob!”
“Yes, I see it is,” replied the scout leader, and somehow there was not much of excitement about either his voice or his manner, only an apparent inane desire to grin, Hiram thought as he looked at his chum.
“There, he’s actually grabbed hold of the fat boy, and is trying to lift him up so as to get him out of the window.”
“You’re a little off there, Hiram. Seems to me I would say Andy was trying to hug the poor fat boy, because he’s certainly thrown his arms around him, and acts as if he might be glad to meet him!”
“Why, Rob, whatever can that mean! He is acting just as you say, and it seems to me Andy isn’t doing all the hugging, either.”
At that Rob broke into a hearty laugh.
“You know what it stands for, and you won’t tell me a thing, which I think is a mean job,” complained Hiram.
“Look again,” Rob told him. “Now the fat boy happens to have his face turned this way. Don’t you think you’ve seen that same moon phiz before, Hiram? Doesn’t it somehow take you back to dear old Hampton, and the many jolly times we’ve had on our camping trips? Say, you ought to know that boy, Hiram.”
As soon as he could catch his breath, Hiram gave a shout.
“Why, consarn my picture if it isn’t our chum, Tubby Hopkins!”
CHAPTER XIV
FOUR SCOUTS IN THE WHIRL
“Come on, let’s join them,” suggested Rob, as he led the way over to where Andy Bowles and the stout youth had started to shaking hands as though they never meant to stop, chattering away like a pair of magpies, and utterly unmindful of the fact that others aboard the car were shrieking aloud with growing fear.
But as it happened just then, whatever may have been the cause for the sudden stoppage of the car suspended in midair, the trouble seemed to have been rectified; for even as Rob led Hiram over to the other pair of Hampton boys, the upward passage was resumed as smoothly as though nothing had occurred.
“Well, well! if this isn’t the biggest surprise ever!” Tubby exclaimed as he seized upon a hand of each of the two newcomers, and then looked around just as if he had begun to believe the whole of Hampton Troop of Boy Scouts must have come on to take in the sights of the big show.
“Only three of us, Tubby,” Rob told him. “We consider ourselves the luckiest scouts in the whole U. S. A. to get a chance to make this side of the slope. Of course we knew you were out here somewhere, but you might as well hunt for a needle in a haystack as to think to find anyone in this mob.”
“But tell me, won’t you, please, how did you make it?” asked Tubby, whose round, rosy face seemed redder than ever under all this excitement.
“Wait till we get down out of this high box,” said Hiram. “We came up here on purpose to get the grand view, you know. Besides, there are too many ears around for my private business to be talked over.”
“Whew!” said Tubby, surveying the speaker with more respect than he had ever before felt toward Hiram, whose many attempts to invent wonderful things had never been taken seriously by his companions.
“But Hiram is right,” said Rob. “We’ll only be up here a short while, so let’s use our eyes the best we can. It’s well worth coming a long way just to get such a panoramic view of the City, Bay and Fair.”
“Panoramic – whew!” whistled Andy; “but I guess that covers the ground as well as any word you could scare up, Rob; for it is a panorama a whole lot better’n any I ever saw painted on canvas, like the Battle of Gettysburg and such.”
They remained at their several posts drinking in the wonderful features of the magnificent view until finally the machinery was set in motion again, and they found themselves being gradually lowered toward the ground. The buildings lost their squatty appearance, the moving throngs of human beings ceased resembling crawling flies, and finally the four boys issued from the cage satisfied that they had experienced a sensation worth while.
“Now, let’s sit down here in the shade for a little while, where we can talk,” suggested Tubby Hopkins, who had been one of the scouts with Rob over in Belgium and France on the previous late summer and fall when the war was going on, and consequently could be looked on as having passed through some lively experiences.
“Just a little while,” agreed Andy; and Hiram, after looking longingly away, no doubt in the direction of the quarter given up wholly to recent remarkable inventions, seemed to resign himself to martyrdom for a spell, for he, too, found a seat close by.
“Now tell it all to me,” demanded Tubby, “because I’m just sure it must be a story worth hearing. What happened to bring you three fellows out here? Did some one die and leave you his fortune? It takes a pretty hefty wad of money to pay all the expenses of a jaunt across the continent.”
“A poor guess that time, Tubby,” said Rob. “We’ll have pity on you, and give you the details before you lose weight trying to hit on the true explanation. To begin with, Hiram won the trip his own way, while Andy and myself just happened by a stroke of good luck to run upon our chance.”
“Tell that to the marines, will you, please?” scoffed Tubby. “Things don’t just happen to you that way, Mr. Assistant Scoutmaster Blake. Every time I’ve known you to get a thing you earned it by the sweat of your brow. I’d rather believe it was the other way, and that Hiram had dropped on a piece of good luck.”
“Well, mebbe I did, Tubby; but then I showed perseverance and grit such as a true scout should allers possess, they say; and so I claim I earned my right to be out here at the Exposition. Go on and tell him the hull story, Rob.”
Seeing that he was expected to undertake the job of being spokesman for the entire party, Rob started in. He was not the one to embellish facts, or try to make things seems of more importance than they really were. Indeed, if anything, Rob was apt to go to the other extreme, especially if he figured at all in a leading rôle in the narrative.
In this way Tubby was finally put in possession of all the needful information connected with their coming. He heard about the smart way in which Hiram had conducted his negotiations by mail with the company that made a specialty of aviation goods, and which apparently had so much faith in his patent stabilizer that they had advanced sufficient funds to enable the inventor to come out and visit them at their headquarters in San Francisco.
Then followed the account of how Rob and Andy had been of such signal service to Captain Jerry and his famous scientific passenger at the time the old naphtha launch took fire while crossing the bay to Collins’ Point; together with what resulted from that rescue.
It was all very interesting to Tubby, who asked many questions when he thought Rob was holding back certain facts that had a direct bearing on the narrative.
“You see, my uncle has gone up to Portland for a week or more on business,” Tubby told them. “He left me to enjoy myself at the Exposition as I pleased. I’m not going around in my scout clothes, but I’ve got the khaki suit at the hotel; and now that I’ve met you fellows, of course, I mean to wear it right along, even if I astonish the natives.”
“Oh, boys wearing khaki are such a common sight these days!” Rob told him in a consoling way, “that you’d not be apt to attract any person’s attention, even if you are stouter than any other scout going.”
“Yes, I’ve met quite a few of the boys and chatted with them, too,” admitted Tubby. “You see, I always make it a point to wear my badges under my coat even if I am in mufti – is that what they call it, Rob, when a military officer dresses in civilian garb? Yes, the scouts are everywhere, and it doesn’t surprise you one bit when you see a couple of them taking part in a camel race, as I did.”
Having finished their explanations, and urged on by the impatient Andy, the little party began to make the rounds of the amusement zone. It was laid out on such an extensive scale that one could hardly expect to do it justice in one afternoon; indeed, Andy announced that he anticipated putting in a full week there, taking in the sights, and feasting his eyes on the wonders that had been collected from the four corners of the earth for this special occasion.
“Here’s where we can see in miniature what some of us have actually looked on before when building – the working of the great Panama Canal,” announced Tubby, as they arrived at the panorama section. “Shall we pay and take chairs on the moving platform for a trip around?”
Of course there was not a dissenting voice, for they were boys, and had plenty of spare change and wanted to see all the sights, at least once.
After that nothing would do for Andy but that they must embark on the train for a trip through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, which was well executed with regard to color effects so as to excite their ardent admiration.
“I was sorely tempted to take that side trip on the way here,” Rob confessed. “We could have done it easily enough, but you see I didn’t know what to do with that priceless stuff we had charge of for Professor McEwen. I couldn’t carry it on mule back, and didn’t dare leave it behind at the hotel. Besides, we promised him we wouldn’t linger on the way going, but do all our sight-seeing coming back.”
“I’m going to fix it with uncle,” asserted Tubby eagerly, “so that I can hold on with you fellows if he has to return sooner, or by another route. I believe I’d enjoy seeing the Selkirks up in Canada first-rate, ’cause I’ve heard a lot about that wonderful scenery.”
“We’ll be glad to have you along, Tubby,” said Andy.
“That goes without saying,” added Hiram; while Rob smiled, and nodded in a way that Tubby knew meant “those are my sentiments, too, every time.”
The next thing on the program was seeing Yellowstone Park, another scenic trip so realistic that Andy declared he would always have trouble convincing himself he had not actually been through the National Reservation where the hot springs and geysers flowed, some of the latter rising a hundred and fifty feet into the air, with steam and vapor forming a dense canopy around.
It was just after they had come out from this that the absence of Hiram was discovered. Tubby professed to be somewhat alarmed, and feared their old chum might have fallen from the observation car; but Rob set his mind straight when he admitted that he had seen Hiram sneaking away.
“He’d reached his limit of endurance,” he told Andy when the latter expressed his opinion of one who cared so little for amusement; “and we’ve got to remember that our chum is a queer fish at best. Besides, his heart is wrapped up in things along a certain line. Let him go his way; and later on, perhaps, when some of us have grown a little tired of all this clatter in the Zone, we’ll hunt up the aviation field and see what Hiram is doing.”
Andy had many more things on his list, but Rob told him not to try and rush it all into one afternoon.
“Take it easy, Andy,” he advised. “‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ you remember. We’re going to be around these haunts for a good long while, and one by one we can see all the shows that are gathered here – that is, all worth seeing. These odd people from the wilds interest me considerably, too, so that I wouldn’t miss looking in on their villages, where they’re genuine, as most of them are, because the management stand for that fact.”
It may have been nearer four o’clock than three, when, being more or less tired with their first day at the Exposition, the three chums turned their faces in a quarter that up to then none of them had visited save Tubby, and he only casually.
“We’ll take a look in at the aëroplane boys first,” said Rob; “and if we don’t run across Hiram there, we will go over to the building where he says many of the latest inventions are on exhibition.”
It was not difficult to discover which way to go, for overhead several aëroplanes were whizzing this way and that. Far up in the heavens they could see a small speck which was no doubt some daring pilot trying for an altitude record.
“Makes me think of those days over in Belgium and France, eh, Rob?” remarked Tubby Hopkins, “where we saw German and French and British and Belgian fliers; yes, and even a big Zeppelin that was meaning to bombard some city.”
“Well,” Andy told them, “here we are on the field, and like as not we’ll find our aviation mad chum over in that crowd around the machines on the ground, where the starts are made.”
“I rather think those must be the various models of new machines,” observed Rob, and immediately adding, “There’s Hiram now; he’s sighted us, and is heading this way.”
“Yes, with a grin as big as a house on his face,” asserted Tubby; “which I take it must mean he’s struck something that tickles him just fierce.”
Hiram joined his three comrades a minute later.
“Well,” he said, in a mysterious fashion, addressing himself particularly to Rob, “the Golden Gate Aëroplane Manufacturing Company has a contraption on one of their machines, intended to equalize shifting weights; but shucks! it isn’t in the same class with my dandy little stabilizer. I guess they mean business in my case, with a big B.”
