Of course, this was the Snowbird, the aeroplane which our friends had been obliged to abandon. But by that time Jack and Mark had built another flying machine on the same lines as the one which they had lost in the crevasse of the glacier.
The professor proceeded to explain and prove all this in his book; but there will always be certain doubters. Washington White, however, was more disturbed than any of the party over the fact that everybody would not accept as true the scientist's account of their wonderful voyage on a torn-away world.
"De stupendous and unprecedented gall some folks has is suttenly beyond comparination!" exploded Wash. "Dere is folks dat ain't nebber been to Bawston, eben, dat dares say dat we didn't go ter Alaska in a flyin' masheen, an' den fly away wid a piece ob dat kentry inter de cimcum-ambient air—droppin' back on de same w'en we'd got t'roo wid it, an' landin' right outside de harbor of San Francisco. Dey won't belieb it at all, not eben w'en I proves it to 'em."
"And how do you prove it to your friends, Wash?" queried Jack Darrow.
"By Buttsy," declared the darkey, gravely.
"By the Shanghai?"
"Yes, sah. By Christopher Columbus Amerigo Vespucci George Washington
Abraham Lincoln Ulysses Grant Garibaldi Thomas Edison Guglielmo Marconi
Butts."
"And how do you prove it by Christopher Columbus And-so-forth?" demanded the chums, in chorus.
"Why," said Wash, rolling his eyes, "I done tooked dat rooster wid me in all ma trabels; didn't I?"
"You most certainly did," admitted Mark.