“Read them off,” he called, “and then get your angle with the Syx works.”
“All right,” I replied, doing as he had requested, and noticing at the same time that he was in the act of putting his watch in his pocket. “Is there anything else?” I asked.
“No, that will do, thank you.”
Hall came running over, his face beaming, and with the air of a man who has just hooked a particularly cunning old trout.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “this has been a great success! I could almost dispense with the calculation, but it is best to be sure.”
“What are you about, anyhow?” I asked, “and what was it that happened to the kite?”
“Don’t interrupt me just now, please,” was the only reply I received.
Thereupon my friend sat down on a rock, pulled out a pad of paper, noted the angles which I had read on the transit, and fell to figuring with feverish haste. In the course of his work he consulted a pocket almanac, then glanced up at the sky, muttered approvingly, and finally leaped to his feet with a half-suppressed “Hurrah!” If I had not known him so well I should have thought that he had gone daft.
“Will you kindly tell me,” I asked, “how you managed to set the kite afire?”
Hall laughed heartily. “You though it was a trick, did you?” said he. “Well, it was no trick, but a very beautiful demonstration. You surely haven’t forgotten the scarlet tanager that gave you such a surprise the day before yesterday.”