“It’s Zack’s flying machine. That’s what it is,” exclaimed Jack, “ho! ho! ho! If that isn’t a crazy-looking machine!”
Indeed, the object now coming toward them with wobbly leaps and hops, was a most curious-looking affair. Its metal wings flopped up and down with great speed, and underneath it could be seen a sort of legs, with wheels on them in place of toes or feet. In between the wings sat Zack, with an alarmed look on his face. In the road behind him was a small runabout auto in which sat Sam Taylor, encouraging him. But Zack paid no attention. In fact, it was taking all his energies to manage his odd machine.
“Well, whatever else it will do, it won’t fly,” declared Tom, “and you’d better look out for it, Jack. I don’t believe he has it under control.” Indeed it didn’t appear so. Zack could now be seen striving with levers and wheels, and the motor of the odd machine gave out a continuous volley of sharp reports.
“Stick to it, Zack!” called out Sam encouragingly from his auto, in which he slowly followed the wild evolutions of Zack’s mechanical bug— for so it could, with propriety, be called. But Zack paid no attention to him. Instead, he began shouting to Jack:
“Pull out of the road! Pull out of the road! I can’t control it.”
Jack maneuvered the Flying Road Racer till its outside wheels overhung a ditch at the side of the road. He had just completed this move when Zack’s machine, its wings beating faster than ever, actually left the ground and soared into the air.
“Hooray! That’s it, Zack! You’re flying!” shouted Sam enthusiastically, although it is doubtful if he would have cared to change places with his crony.
But although Zack had begun to soar, his flight soon ended. At a height of about four feet from the ground the machine wobbled and then crashed to earth. Zack strove in vain to stop it as it drove, snorting and popping, full at the Flying Road Racer, which Jack could not steer further off the road.
“Look out!” cried Jack, “you’ll be into us. You’ll——”
The sentence was never completed. As Jack uttered it, Zack gave a wild yell and tried to jump out of his uncontrollable invention. The next instant the machine, its wings flapping and its motor buzzing furiously, struck the front of the Flying Road Racer a glancing blow and then turned completely over, burying its luckless inventor in a ruin of twisted rods and bent wings.