“Put yours on the stabilizing shaft when I take mine off.”
“Stabilizing shaft,” repeated Andy, memorizing, “and the name of the airship painted on that big paddle is the Eagle. Oh, hurrah for the Eagle!”
“When I whistle once, press down with your foot. Twice, you take your foot off. When I whistle twice, pull over the handle right at your side on the center-drop.”
“‘Center-drop’?” said Andy. “I’m getting it fast.”
Z—zip! Andy fancied that something was wrong, for the machine contorted like a horse raising on his rear feet. Toot! Andy did not lose his nerve. Toot—toot! he grasped the handle at his side and pulled it back.
“Good for you!” commended the aeronaut heartily. “Now, then, for a spin.”
Andy simply looked and felt for the next ten minutes. The pretty, dainty machine made him think of a skylark, an arrow, a rocket. He had a bouyant sensation like a person taking laughing gas.
The lifting planes moved readily under the manipulation of an expert hand. There was one level flight where the airship exceeded any railroad speed Andy had ever noted. Farms, villages, streams, hills, faded behind them in an endless panorama.
Toot!—Andy followed instructions. They slowed up over a town that seemed to be some railroad center. Beyond it the machine skimmed a broad prairie and then gracefully settled down in the center of a fenced-in space.
Its wheels struck the ground. They rolled along for about fifty yards, and halted by the side of a big tent with an open flap at one side.