"Here—here!" she heard from the kitchen. "What's this a-pullin'? Land o' promise, Phœbe, come quick! I've got a stroke!"
"I can't come!" wailed Phœbe. "I'm jammed tight up against the wall. It's as though I was nailed to it."
"Oh, why—why did ye touch that machinery!" cried Rebecca, and then said no more.
The speed indicator pointed to one hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. They were making one revolution around the pole each second—and they were helpless.
As she found herself pushed outward by the immensely increased centrifugal force, Phœbe found it possible to seat herself upon one of the settles, and she now sat with her back pressed firmly against the south wall of the room, only able by a strong effort to raise her head.
She turned to the right and found that Droop had found a couch on the floor under the table and chairs at the rear of the room, also against the south wall.
In the kitchen Rebecca had crouched down as she found herself forced outward, and she now sat dazed on the kitchen floor surrounded by the fragments of their breakfast all glued to the wall as tightly as herself.
"Oh, dear—oh, dear!" she cried, closing her eyes. "Copernicus Droop said that side weight would be terrible if we travelled too fast. Why, I'm so heavy sideways I feel like as if I weighed 497½ pounds like that fat woman in the circus down to Keene."
"So do I," Phœbe said, "only I'm so dizzy, too, I can hardly think."
"Shet your eyes, like me," said Rebecca.