"Think!" exclaimed Tom, "I don't know what to think. It's—well—marvelous doesn't describe it."
"So you are impressed, eh?" asked the inventor, in whose tones an under current of satisfaction was plainly perceptible.
"Impressed! My dear sir, we are dumfounded!" gasped the professor.
"Wait," went on the inventor with a queer sort of smile, "you haven't seen half yet."
"What's coming now?" wondered Tom. He was about to speak, but instead a sudden cry forced itself to his lips. Looking down the water-walled canyon through which they were rushing he became all at once aware that the huge black hull of a lake steamer was looming right ahead of them.
At the terrific pace they were making (the speed indicator recorded thirty knots), it seemed impossible to avert disaster, swift, awful and in evitable.
Tom glanced at the others. The professor's lips were parted with a look of horror. Jeff was white and was gripping a hand rail so tightly that the blood had left his knuckles. Rosewater had turned a sickly gray under his black skin.
"Fo' de lan's sake!" he kept murmuring over and over.
Then Tom's gaze was turned toward the inventor. He stood at his lever as immovable and unmoved as a figure carved from stone. A half smile appeared frozen on his face.
They were very close to the black, wet sides of the steamer now. Tom, looking upward, could see figures scurrying about her lofty decks. They were gesticulating and pointing, and doubtless shouting as they saw this little fury of the lakes bearing down on them. Even in that thrilling moment Tom found himself wondering how it would feel if the Huron was engaged in war and the vessel they were rushing upon was one of a fleet of Uncle Sam's enemies.