The words died on the captain’s lips. The boys jumped to their feet. All had been startled by a heavy crash on the roof of the house!
CHAPTER VI
TUNING IN
“It’s the Shooting Star!” cried Jimmy. “She’s been driven back and fallen on the roof!”
Appalled by the possibility, Captain Springer and the boys rushed up the stairs, followed by the others in the house.
But the sight of a crushed-in roof that they half-expected to see was spared them. It was intact, but the glass of the skylight had been shivered, and across the open sash lay a heavy bough of a tree that had been torn by the gale from the parent oak near by and flung to the roof.
“Bad enough, but it might easily have been worse!” exclaimed Bob. “If that had been the airship, it would have been good-bye house.”
Mr. Layton and the boys boarded up the skylight temporarily, and, immensely relieved, all went downstairs. The captain looked at his watch with a start.
“I’ve stayed too long!” he exclaimed.
“You can’t stay too long,” declared Joe.
“Or come too often,” added Bob.