CHAPTER XIX
A RECORD FLIGHT
It had come at last, that starless night, that stupendous night of whichPemrose had dreamed for a year, as she perched on a laboratory stool andwatched her father at work, when the little Thunder Bird, the smallerrocket, would take its experimenting flight, its preliminary canter, upa couple of hundred miles, or so, into the air,--and on into thin space.
Most dashing explorer ever was, it would keep a diary, or log, of itsflying trip.
But whereas travelers, hitherto, had carried that up a sleeve or in abreast-pocket, it would have its journal in its cone-shaped head; thelittle openwork box, five inches square, with the tape-like paperwinding from one to another of the wheels within and the tiny pencilmaking shorthand markings, curve or dash, as the air pressed upon it,until it got beyond the air-belt altogether--out into that bitter voidof space, where pressure there was none.
No wonder that the inventor called this log the golden egg, for when themagic Bird had flown its furthest, when all the little powder-rocketswhich, exploding successively, sent it on its way, were spent, then itsdying scream would release the log from its bursting head.
Back that would come, fluttering to earth on the wing of a sableparachute, lit on the way, as it drifted down two hundred miles, or so,by the glowworm gleam of a tiny electric battery,--a little dry cellattached to it!
And this, really, was, as Pemrose had said, the kernel of the presentexperiment to her father, the only witness to prove that the babyThunder Bird had, indeed, "got there", flown higher than anythingearthly had ever ventured before; and that if a little two-footer in theshape of a sky-rocket had done so much, then there was nothing toprevent a twenty-foot steel Bird from flying on indefinitely,--even toMammy Moon, herself, or fiery-eyed Mars, perhaps.
"I don't believe that Dad has slept for two nights now, thinking aboutits safe return," said Pemrose to Una, as in the starless,breeze-tickled night the two crouched together upon the mountain-top.
"Well! that little firefly, the tiny electric lamp--the 'wee bitbattery', as Andrew calls it--will guide us to finding it when it driftsdown," panted the other girl, excitement fixing that little peculiarstand, like a golden lamp, in her dark eye.
"Yes, but--" perhaps her dream in the bungalow of Ta-te, the tempest,was affecting Pemrose--"but suppose, oh! suppose, that the wind--thereis a wind--should waft it away--away from us, down the mountainside, towhere we couldn't find it in the woods--dark woods--to where somebody,some horrid meddler, might pick it up, and get a look at the ThunderBird's diary before us ... the first record from so high up. Oh--dear!"
The girl's sigh was echoed by that stealthy wind around her, in whoseevery whisper there was menace, as it swept through the long grasses andruffled the ash trees of Greylock's summit.
Una, to whom this "half the battle", the quick locating of the parachuteand its treasure, was not so vital, soared above all threat in thiswitching-time of excitement--the transcendent hour.
"The Thunder Bird's diary! Oh-h! the Thunder Bird's diary," she repeateddreamily, as if reciting a charm.
Being Camp Fire Girls of fervid imagination, the supreme invention, thebeginning of old Earth's reaching out to the heavenly bodies, gained itscrowning romance from them.
As moment by moment flew by romance in their young breasts became a sortof rhapsody that set every thought to wild music.
To Pem it was as she had dreamed it would be, away back in her father'slaboratory, before the February train wreck.
Hands seemed reaching out to her from everywhere,--she the satellitereflecting her father's light.
From the four quarters of the habitable earth eyes seemed trained uponher, as she knelt in a little island of flashlight, with her thumb on anelectric button which, connected by wires with a platform about ahundred feet away, would throw the switch and release the magic Bird toflying.
"N-now, keep cool, Pem! Don't get excited--too ex-ci-ted--or-r you maymiss the moment when they shout to you: 'R-ready! Shoot!'" breathed Una,so wrought up herself that her words had a sort of little zip, a hiss,in them, like the soft sighing of the breeze at the moment.
Pemrose knew that her father's thoughts were taken up all the time withthat summit breeze, on how far it might affect the safe return of thegolden egg, as he hovered about the low platform, a hundred feet away,on which the little Thunder Bird was mounted, together with his youngassistant tightening up every bolt and screw for the record flight. Athird tall figure hovered near, within the ring of distant flashlight,that of Una's father, as transported now over the whole experiment as ifhe had never hinted that the far-flying rocket was a Quaker gun.
With the girls in their little fairy-like ring of electric light--to goout like a will o' the wisp presently--was their usual body-guard, oldAndrew, who had driven the party up the mountain.
"Cannily noo, lassie! _Cannily._ Dinna be fechless--flighty!" TheScot was breathing like a Highland gust as he cautioned the girl whosetingling little thumb touched lightly as thistledown the fairy button."Whoop!" he grunted sharply. "I reckon they're maist ready, noo, to gieit its fling--let it go!"
It was at this moment that in the distant island of flashlight an armwas flung up. It was that of the professor's young assistant.
He forgot to bring it down again.
And, lo! a hush, as of a world suspended, fell upon old Greylock,--thatgrim, black mountain-top.
The long grasses ceased to whisper. The mountain-ash trees cuddled theirlittle pale berry-babies in awe.
"All R-ready! _Shoot!_"
Toandoah's battle-cry it was.
A roar as of a small brass cannon, the first gun of the new conquest,responded, as the hand of a Camp Fire Girl of America pressed thebutton, triumphantly throwing the switch in the nozzle, or tailpart, ofthe mounted rocket, a hundred feet away.
Simultaneously the flashlights went out.
And in the darkness--into the blackness the little Thunder Bird soared.
Soared with the wild red eye of its headlight challenging the heavensthemselves to stop it, with its comet-like tail of red fire streamingout full twenty feet behind it.
At lightning speed,--fifty miles the first minute, a hundred thenext,--it leaped from its mountain platform straight up--bound for thevacant lot of space.
Explosion after bright explosion tore the cloud-banks as, one by one,the innumerable little rockets, which Pem had watched her father fittinginto their grooves in its interior--far back in that quietlaboratory--went off.
And with each radiant roar higher--faster--it dashed, the little ThunderBird, with never a puff of smoke to dim the spectacle--thetransplendency of its flight.
"Michty! Michty!... _Magerful!_"
There was just the one skirl from Andrew, to lend it music on its upwardway; he had not thought that he came to America to witness a thing likethis.
"Magerful", indeed! Magical, indeed! The others were silent, swept awayby the magic of it--the greater, moon-storming magic to come.
Only--only, they breathlessly asked themselves: "What next?"
Well! the immediate "next" would be the return of the golden egg, thediary, the falling fruit of the experiment, without which there was noproof of its success--of how high the fiery Bird had flown--before, itslast automatic charge expended, it sang its swan-song somewhere inspace.
At the increasing speed with which the little Thunder Bird flew--whenmiles were but a moment--the record might be expected back in a fewminutes.
Minutes--but they seemed a moon's age!
It was Una--Una--who saw it first: the tiny speck of star-dust driftingdown, down among the woolly clouds--dark as if the night had been shornand its fleece hung out to dry--alighting here and there, the littlefirefly, in other words the atomy electric battery attached to theprecious record, trying so hard, with the parachute's aid, to find itsway back to earth from the lonely height it had reached.
Another quarter of a minute, and they could trace the outline of theblack silk parachu
te, itself, a drifting crow with their prize in itsclaws; that prize which the inventor, at least, would have given tenyears of his life to grasp--if, grasping it, he could see that thelittle pencil had duly made its record markings--the proof that hisThunder Bird had "got there."
"Glory halleluiah! it's drifting down right into our laps--into the oldmountain's lap, rather! The wind won't carry it far, I bet! 'Twill landwithin quarter of a mile of us, anyhow," shrieked the professor's youngassistant, a college boy, an athlete, who had led the quarter-milesprint on many a hard-won field, when the racing honor of a school wasat stake; and he ran as never before to get the better of the trickygusts and seize the parachute--faster, even, than the nickum, thatmysterious youth, had run, when he saved the day for the mountain teamat baseball.
"Hoot mon! Dinna ye let it get away frae ye into the dar-rk woods!"skirled Andrew, equally excited, and filled with awe of the ravenparachute now springing, like a great, black mushroom, out of thenight--and of the firefly which had been up so high.
"Oh! it is--it is drifting towards the dark spruce woods--where we'llhave hard work to find it."
In the wild chase after the prize, Pemrose made a good third, as shethus shouted her fear.
"See--oh! see, it _is_ landing," she cried again, "c-comingdown--touching earth."
Yes! for one fleeting instant it did alight upon a mound, the shootingstarlet, the little electric dry cell, winking brilliantly against thebackground of somber evergreens, now dark as Erebus, that girdle oldGreylock's crown.
Then, freakish firefly, there, it was off again, the prey of the nickumgusts, before ever a hand could touch it--the black parachute rotatinglike a whirligig.
Never--oh, never--was such a chase for such a prize since mountain wasmountain and man was man!
Once again the steely clog, the weight of the five-inch box containingthe recording apparatus, the precious log, almost dragged it to astandstill! But the summit gusts were strong.
Even the college boy began to have heart-quakes and Pemroseheart-sinkings.
"Jove! What a stunt you're pulling off on us, you old black crow of aparachute--you booby-headed umbrella!" groaned he. "C-can't you stay putfor just a second? Or are you bent on leading us a dance through thewoods?"
He began to lose hope of its landing in his lap, that breezy athlete, asit made straight for the jaws of darkness now, the inky spruce-belt--theparachute coquetting with its pursuers, like a great black fan.
Was--was it the wind then?
Something--something caught it up, the golden log--the first record fromspace--something snatched it up and whisked it off, off into thoseblackamoor woods, while the feet of the foremost runner were still manyyards away.
"'Twas na the wind! 'Twas mon or deil; I saw it loop out frae theboggart trees!" roared Andrew.
And now in his skirl there was a wild ring of superstition that turnedgirlish hearts quite cold.
"I saw it loup out frae the dark--dar-rk woods!" he insisted hoarsely.
Ah! but those dim spruce woods were faintly illumined now with strangelittle dots and dashes of light--the firefly winking passionately, as ifsomebody, some thief, were running with it.
And _they_ ran, too, its rightful owners, in full cry, callingfrantically upon the robber, whether thief, or tempest, to stop.
And the girls kept bravely up with the men. Or one of them did! For allthe spice of her chowchow name was afire in Pemrose Lorry now; and shewould have tackled the thief, single-handed, to get back her father'srecord.
Into the core of darkness--in among the ebony spruce-boughs--the jetty,frowning trunks, the snarling, brambly underbrush, dashed the chase, thehue and cry, not daring to turn on a flashlight and in its glare losethe one little piloting blink ahead, which now seemed to haveconsiderable odds on them, as it fled helter-skelter through the woods.
"My word! this--this beats anything I ever dr-reamed of," gurgled thecollege boy. "The Thing, whatever it is, has us nicely fooled.There--there, it has switched off the 'glim' now--the little, telltalebattery. Now--where are we?"
No one could tell, as they floundered about, three men, and two girls,in the mysterious night-woods--without a clew--Pemrose clingingdesolately to her father now, Una to hers--while Andrew, the ChurchElder, muttered weird Highland curses.
Nobody could tell where they were, indeed, figuratively, of course,except--except that the experiment was a failure, so far as any proof tothe World was concerned!
Except that Toandoah's hopes were dashed,--if not broken!
The first record from Space was stolen,--or lost.