“You’d have shot a tapir with the rifle, I suppose,” scoffed Joe.
“No; I’d have shot a-a——”
“Good heavens!” cried the professor, as both Nat and Joe sprang forward.
The abrupt conclusion of the stuttering boy’s speech had been caused by the fact that, as he made it, he half turned, and losing his balance plunged over the rail.
The Discoverer was then nineteen hundred and fifty feet above the surface of the earth!
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CITY OF A VANISHED RACE.
But even in that instant of deadly peril, Ding-dong did not lose his presence of mind, or, perhaps, instinct of self-preservation would be a better phrase.
As he felt himself lose his balance, he clung to the network of the rail, and hung there head downward between the sky and the earth for one instant. But that brief molecule of time was enough for Joe and Nat to secure his feet, as they flashed over the rail, and drag him back on board.
“Go to the cabin, sir,” ordered the professor, who was white and shaky, as, indeed, were the others.