“We’ll have to go on up—until—until——”
Mr. Glassford did not finish.
“My head feels queer!” cried Bob, staggering about the cabin. “I feel dizzy.” And before Ned, who was standing near him, could grasp his chum, Bob had fallen upon the floor of the car.
[CHAPTER XIX]
STARTING FOR THE RACE
“Go back to him, Jerry,” cried Mr. Glassford, observing from the pilot house what had happened. “Tell him to swallow several mouthfuls of water. That will equalize the pressure on his ear-drums, which is what makes him feel so badly. We are up rather high, and still ascending.”
Jerry and his chums had been told how to conduct themselves in case of emergency in high altitudes, and though when he reached the place where Bob was stretched out in great distress he found Ned about to succumb to the rarefied atmosphere, Jerry did not lose his head. He procured water from a tank, made both lads swallow some, and then, with the aid of Professor Snodgrass, administered a few simple remedies. Ned and Bob soon felt better.
Curiously enough, neither Jerry nor the professor were affected by the height to which the Comet had now shot. As for Mr. Glassford, he had made too many balloon ascensions to mind being a few miles up in the air. His principal anxiety was now regarding the mechanism of the motor ship.
Work as desperately as he did, and pull as hard as was safe on the lever that shifted the rudder controlling the height, nothing resulted from it. Nor could he open the valve that held the gas in the big bag.