I did realize, without any effort, that my lower limbs were developing excruciating shooting pains from the cramped position.
The time passed very slowly. The houses below passed with astounding rapidity.
I thought of our wives, sitting calmly in my home, ignorant of our plight. I wondered what their sentiments would be when some kindly ambulance surgeon had brought home such fragments of Hawkins and me as might have been collected with a dust-pan and brush.
I wondered whether the accursed Anti-Fire-Fly would dump us out and flutter away into eternity, to leave our fate unexplained, or whether it would accompany us to our doom and be found gloating over the respective grease-spots that would represent all that was mortal of Hawkins and myself.
And at about this point in my meditations, I noted that we were sailing over Union Square.
“Isn't it fine?” cried Hawkins enthusiastically. “You never came down-town like this before, Griggs.”
“I never expect to again, Hawkins,” I sighed.
“Why not? Why, Griggs, this thing is only the nucleus of my future airship, and yet see how it floats! Oh, I've thought it all out in the last five minutes. It's astonishing that it never occurred to me before. Now, these wings, you see, are so constructed——”
“See here, Hawkins,” I said, “do you mean to say that you expect to get out of this thing alive?”
“Certainly,” replied the inventor in astonishment. “There's no danger. I can see that now, although I was a trifle startled at first. It's only a matter of minutes when we shall go near enough to one of those big office buildings to grab it and stop ourselves.”