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.”