"How'd you git on that guy-wire?" demanded Peel, breaking into the conversation at this juncture. "The head of that is more'n twenty feet from where you were working?"
"I took the air-line route," grinned Jarvis.
"Tell us what happened?" urged Steve.
"I was working over the top. Something all of a sudden went wrong, and there didn't seem to be any smoke or anything coming out. I got up on the edge of the crater——"
"You mean the furnace?"
"I mean what I said. It was a crater, and don't you forget it—a real, live crater. You'd have thought so if you had seen it spit fire and lava. Well, about the time I got up on the edge, pouf! slam, bang! The whole insides of the volcano popped up in my face. I must have fallen over in, for the eruption lifted me right out again. I did another aviation act. I spread my planes and sailed through the air——"
"Was that—no, of course not. Where were you all the time from the explosion to just now, when you came down on the wire?"
"I was roosting on that flange up there near the top of the stove."
"What? Thrown way over there?" exclaimed Steve.