"Huh! I believe you!" grumbled the skeptical George.
"It's what they call a parachute," Toby continued, glibly. "You know the kind the hot air balloon men use at county fairs when they go up; well this is an improvement along that line, and is intended to let an aeronaut drop a mile and more, if anything happens to his machine when he's up among the clouds."
"That sounds pretty well, Toby," remarked Elmer, though there was a shade of doubt on his face, for up to then Toby had really never managed to impress his chums with his greatness as an inventor; he was always getting excited over things, but seemed to lack the ability to successfully grasp the ideas that were floating around in his mind.
"You'll soon see that this time I have got a grand scheme in this safety device," the inventor boasted; "you know there are an awful lot of casualties among air-men these days. Some sort of thing goes wrong when they're away up, and nearly every time it means they fall like a stone. My wonderful parachute will make it impossible for the aviator who carries one along with him to be killed. Let his machine head for the earth like a meteor, and as for him he'll drift down as softly as you please."
"Go on and tell us how all this is meant to do the business," asked Chatz, as Toby amused himself in opening and closing the folds of the big stout umbrella, which certainly seemed to work smoothly enough.
"Why, you see it's fixed so that it will be attached to the back of the man in the aeroplane all the time he's up; a sort of insurance plan, because while he may not need it at all, if he does it's there handy. When he finds his machine has gone back on him all he has to do is to jump boldly out into space. The Jones patent parachute does all the rest. It's as reliable as United States bonds, and will save lots of the poor fellows who, but for my thinking up this scheme, might have lost their lives this next year."
"Of course you've tried it out, Toby?" suggested Chatz.
"Never will work in the wide world," affirmed George; "because in nine cases out of ten it'd get caught somehow in the planes or the machinery of the aeroplane, and the poor chump who had pinned his faith to the Jones Parachute would come down ker-plunk with his wrecked motor!"
"Shows how little you know about some things, George," Toby flashed back; "if the directions are faithfully followed there never can be an accident like you say. As to trying it out, I've had one little drop, say of about ten feet, but that was too short, because the umbrella didn't have a chance to get fully open; and when I struck the ground it near rattled every tooth in my head out. But now I want to get up at least thirty feet, and then drop with the thing already open."
"But see here," Elmer told him; "I should think you'd have found a way to test the opening of the thing by throwing it over some precipice, with a heavy rock tied in place of a man."