He did actually bump his head upon the tree trunk above them. But the next moment Jack scrambled through the opening, light and all, and came out upon the open ground.
"I'm here, Jack! I'm here!" cried Mark. "But what's happened to me?" "Whatever it is, it has happened to us all," returned his chum. "I seem to have overcome a good bit of the law of gravitation. Never felt so light in my heels in all my life before."
"What can it mean?" whispered Mark in his chum's ear. "It's magic!"
"You've got me," admitted Jack. "I'm not trying to explain it. But I know that the air pressure on me isn't as great as it was. I feel like we did when we were on the moon."
"Something awful has happened," suggested Mark, his tone still worried.
"We can be sure of that," Andy Sudds said. "What shall we do?"
"Find that stuff we were carrying and get back to the professor with it," said Jack, briefly. "Here! I see the storage battery lamp—or, one of them at least."
Mark at the same time stooped to pick up two of the lost rods. Jack found the lamp to be in good order and gave it to Andy. The torch was rapidly becoming exhausted.
"Come, Washington," urged Jack, "you hunt around, too. We must find the parts of the airship we dropped. If we don't find them we'll never get away from this place."
"And is we gotter go in de Snowbird, Massa Jack?" queried the darkey. "Has we jest gotter go in dat flyin' contraption? Gollyation! dis chile hoped de walkin' would be good out oh Alaska. He an' Buttsy jest erbout made up deir minds dat dey wouldn't fly no mo'. Fac' is, I had some idea ob clippin' Buttsy's wings so dat he couldn't fly no mo'!"