A BREAKDOWN
The crowd, which at first had been inclined to be amused at the
spectacle of the odd little man shinning up a rope, was somewhat aghast
at Jerry’s cry. And indeed it was a perilous climb that Professor
Snodgrass had essayed.
For the hangars were rather frail, and were only designed as shelters
from the sun and rain, being merely poles set in the earth, with a
light frame built on them, and muslin, or thin canvas, stretched over.
“Come down!” pleaded Jerry. “Don’t trust your weight to that tent,
professor!”
“I must! I must get that insect!” he replied. “It is a very rare kind
of flying grasshopper, and I can see it perched up on the ridge pole!”
“What’s the matter, is he crazy?” asked a man of Ned.
“No, he’s only a scientific enthusiast,” was the reply.
The danger of Mr. Snodgrass was now obvious to all, for the frail
shelter was swaying with his weight.
“Here! What’s going on!” imperiously demanded Noddy Nixon. With Bill
Berry, he had been over to the secretary’s office, and the bully was
now coming back on the run as he saw the crowd about his tent.
“Get away from there!” he cried. “Ah, it’s that Snodgrass man! He’s
trying to get in our hangar, and damage our machine. Bill, call a
policeman and have him arrested. Get down off there, Snodgrass!” he
called disrespectfully.
“Oh, dry up!” advised Bob to the bully. “Don’t you suppose if he wanted
to get in there he could have gone in easier than by climbing up a
rope?”
“Well, he has no right on our tent,” went on Noddy.
“He’s after a new kind of grasshopper,” explained Ned.
The professor paid no heed to the cries of warning, nor to Jerry’s
appeals. Yet he was in grave danger. His motions, as he went up the
rope hand over hand, for he was quite an athlete, made the main front
pole of the hangar sway more and more, and it was almost on the point
of snapping off.
“Come back! Come back!” pleaded Jerry.
“Not until I get that insect!” replied the scientist. “It is very rare.
Ah, I see you, my beauty! Keep still a moment longer and I’ll have you!”
He tried to reach up with a short net he took from his pocket,
meanwhile supporting himself on the rope by one hand and by twisting
his legs in the strands. But he could not quite stretch far enough.
Then he seemed to become aware of the dangerously swaying pole, which
was becoming loose in the ground. The professor looked down at the
crowd below him.
“He’ll fall in another minute,” predicted a man.
“Get a net!” ordered some one.
“There isn’t any,” was the reply.
“A ladder then! Get a ladder! He’ll be killed!”
The professor looked longingly at the grasshopper, then he gazed
down at the crowd below him. To his credit be it said that he was
not afraid. Yet he saw the impossibility of keeping on. And, if he
slid down, the violent motion of the rope thus occasioned might have
disastrous results.
“Come on, Ned and Bob, we’ve got to save him!” cried Jerry.
“How you going to do it?” asked the merchant’s son.
“I saw a big step ladder over here!” went on the tall lad, running
toward a tent where was housed a dirigible balloon. “It’s an immense
one. We can put it up near the rope, and he can get down on it.”
They found the ladder standing outside the tent, and it was the work
of but a few seconds to rush it back to where the scientist was still
dangling. Nor were they any too soon, for as they got it in place the
swaying pole cracked off close to the ground, and the professor just
managed to throw himself on the ladder which was grasped and held firm
by scores of willing hands.
“Oh, dear! the grasshopper got away!” exclaimed the scientist as he
reached the ground.
The professor thought more of the loss of the insect than he did of his
own narrow escape, but a little later, having succeeded in capturing
a curious kind of bug in the grass near the tent of the _Comet_, he
forgot his troubles.
There were many interesting aerial exhibitions that afternoon, and
several small races in which our heroes did not take part. Noddy Nixon
and Bill went in one race and won it, much to the delight of the bully,
though really he deserved small credit, for his machine was much more
powerful than those of his competitors.
Then came the turn of our friends to show what could be done in their
craft, and to the wonder of the crowd they went up almost out of sight,
coasted down on a bank of air, propelled themselves as a dirigible
balloon, as an aeroplane, making the change high above the earth and
then did some other intricate evolutions. They received many vigorous
rounds of applause.
That night our friends made a careful examination of their craft in
anticipation of the races for high distance that were to take place on
the morrow.
“Is Noddy going to compete against us?” asked Bob. “I suppose he will
though.”
“No, he isn’t!” declared Ned, who had just come in from the secretary’s
office.
“Why not?” demanded Jerry.
“Oh he and Bill got huffy at something, or else they are afraid, and
they have withdrawn their entry. The secretary said Noddy was going to
take his machine and leave.”
“Small loss,” commented Bob.
There were not so many entrants in the trial for a record elevation
as there had been in the hundred miles race, but there were enough to
make it interesting. Our heroes got a good start and began the upward
spiral climb, going higher and higher, well in advance of all the
others.
They were making good speed, though the Wright biplane was creeping up
on them, when there sounded on ominous snapping sound from the motor
room.
“What’s that?” cried Jerry, who was in the pilot house.
“I’ll see,” offered Ned.
He came back with a rueful countenance.
“Well,” asked Jerry.
“One of the cylinders is cracked,” reported the merchant’s son.
“Then we’ve got to go down,” declared Jerry.
“We’re going down already,” exclaimed Bob, looking at the barograph. It
had registered a little over two miles, but now the hand was rapidly
swinging the other way as the motor of the _Comet_ lost speed at every
revolution.