“This is terrible!” we gasped, and fled for the street.
Here high comedy reigned rampant, if any one had been in a mood to appreciate the fact. Two policemen, one stout and red-faced, the other tall and thin, beat down the block, their eyes aloft, bawling impossible directions. A butcher’s boy, followed by a gang of enthusiastic street urchins, had clambered to the roof of his cart, and moving slowly along directly beneath the labouring machine, rose ever and again in a series of ungainly but agile leaps, clutching hopefully at the surrounding atmosphere. In the area-ways, and gathered on the neighbouring stoops, were groups of excited people. Rose, escaped from the kitchen, had climbed the hydrant in front of our house, where, supported by Mrs. Hancock, she maintained a perilous equilibrium, the while she waved a red cotton lunch cloth and bellowed,—
“Whar yer boun’ fer, Miss Ernie? Fer de Law’s sake tell us whar yer boun’ fer?”
While Miss Brown, her head wrapped in her pink knitted shawl, ran back and forth, clucking like a distraught hen.
“Is she any relation to you, mum?” the red-faced policeman demanded of mother, jerking his thumb severely skyward as he spoke.
“My daughter,” came the distracted response.
“Then call her down,” commanded the minion of the law. “Oi can’t have such goin’s-on on my beat!”
“She doesn’t know how to manage the machine,” mother said. “At any moment it may fall with her. What is to be done?”
“Hi, Bill! ring in an al-lar-rum,—fer the hook-an’-ladder comp’ny, and an amberlance!” shouted the policeman to his mate at the corner.
At the same moment the airship, as if instinct with demoniacal life, ceased for an appreciable instant its laboured progress, began to nose the air uncertainly, and then in a short series of jerky swoops rose, again and again, to an altitude of some hundred feet or so. There it poised, came about in its sweep, rose once more, and finally began to settle with steadily increasing velocity.