“Well, it's a sea all right,” generously declared Waldo, giving a vigorous sniff by way of strengthening his words. “I can smell the salt clear from this. A sea, even if it isn't quite so large as others,—what one might term a lower-case c!”
If nothing else, that generous effort brought its reward in the dry little chuckle which escaped the professor's lips, and a kindly glow showed through his glasses as he turned towards Waldo with a nod of acknowledgment.
“Barring the salty scent, my dear boy, which probably finds birth in your kindly imagination. So, on the whole, perhaps 'twould be just as well to term it a lake.”
“One of no mean dimensions, at any rate, uncle Phaeton.”
“True, Bruno,” with a nod of agreement, yet with forehead contracting into a network of troubled lines. “Naturally so, and yet—surely this must be merely a portion? Unless—yet I fail to see aught which might be interpreted as being—”
Promptly responding to each touch of hand upon steering-gear, the aeromotor swung smoothly around, sailing on even keel right into the teeth of the gentle wind, by this time near enough to that body of water for the air-voyagers to scan its surface: a considerable expanse, all told, yet by no means of such magnitude as Professor Featherwit had anticipated.
Too deeply absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the little cries and ejaculations which came from the brothers, he caused the aerostat to rise higher, slowly sweeping that extended field with his glasses.
He could see where several streams entered the body of water, coming from opposite points of the compass, and thus confirming at least one portion of his explained theory; but, so far as his visual powers went, there was no other considerable body of water to be discovered.
“Yet, how can that contracted basin contain all the drainage from this vast scope of country? How can we explain the stubborn fact of—What now, lads?”
An abrupt break, but one caused by the eager cry and loud speech from the lips of the younger Gillespie.