As the delighted youth stared upward, he saw painted in glaring letters on the under side of the single plane the words:
“The Dragon of the Skies.”
“Aren’t you coming down to call?” asked Harvey. “No one could be so welcome as you.”
“So I judged from the way things looked; I have been up here some time watching matters. You keeled over that brute beautifully.”
“He is showing signs of revival.”
“Stand a little out of the way and watch me help revive him.”
Harvey, relieved beyond expression by the happy turn of affairs, sprang several paces aside and watched his friend aloft. He was still standing erect, balanced so perfectly in the calm that he did not have to steady himself. The missiles which he had flung to the earth were simply giant firecrackers, some six inches long and more than an inch in diameter. He knew when he lighted the powder-soaked string which served as a fuse how many seconds it would require to reach the powder within. It has been shown how accurate he was in his calculations.
Harvey saw the flicker of the smoking match as it was touched to the short dangling twist of fuse attached to the cracker which he held in his left hand beside his waist, while with one eye closed he squinted along the red tube as if aiming a gun. Then he parted his thumb and forefinger and the cracker tumbled downward end over end, and either through extraordinary skill or by good luck dropped upon the chest of Bill and burst with terrific force and deafening noise.
It certainly “revived” the man, for with a howl he leaped to his feet and plunged in among the trees in the wildest panic conceivable. A fifty-pound bombshell would have caused more damage but could not have created greater terror.
Harvey in the reaction of his spirits leaned against his biplane to keep from falling through excessive mirth. He had never seen anything so funny in his life. In the midst of his merriment, Professor Milo Morgan called down: