Down glided the airship. She was at the end of the first part of her trip. But a harder voyage was yet ahead of her and the boys.
[CHAPTER XVI]
THE MINER’S STORY
“Well, you got here at last, did you?” called Jim Nestor, as he came forward to greet the boys and the professor as they alighted from the airship. “We’ve been sort of sightin’ for ye the last few hours. I calculated you’d be along about now, but Sledge Hammer Tod, here, he allowed as how you wouldn’t show up for a week, and maybe not at all, for he don’t believe in airships; do you, Tod?” and Jim looked at an old miner who shuffled up with him.
“Never havin’ seen one, I put ’em in the same class with Santa Claus,” answered the miner. “But I believe in ’em now.”
He glanced with wondering eyes at the big airship, which had settled down on a level spot in front of the group of buildings that were around the shaft of the boys’ gold mine.
“Boys, let me introduce to you my friend, Mr. Embury Tod—Sledge Hammer Tod, I call him, for he hammers away at things, and there isn’t a better miner going. Tod, these are the boys I was telling you of.”
“Pleased to meet you,” spoke the old miner, with a friendly nod. “And so that’s the airship, eh?”
“Airship or motor ship, as we sometimes call it,” replied Jerry. “We came all the way from the East in it.”