He was within five yards when suddenly the aviator turned and covered him with a revolver! And, speaking in a sharp, staccato voice, he said:
“Old grandfather, you must sit down. I am very occupied. If you interfere or attempt to go away, I shoot you. So!”
Sam gazed at the horrid glittering little barrel, and gasped. Well, he never! To be threatened with murder when you’re doing your duty in your employer’s private property! But, still, perhaps the man was mad. A man must be more or less mad to go up in one of those crazy things. And life was very sweet on that summer morning, in spite of sixty-nine years. He sat down among the swedes.
The aviator was so busy with his cranks and machinery that he hardly deigned to pay him any attention, except to keep the revolver handy. He worked feverishly, and Sam sat watching him. At the end of ten minutes he seemed to have solved his troubles with the machine, but he still seemed very scared. He kept on glancing round and out to sea. When his repairs were completed, he straightened his back and wiped the perspiration from his brow. He was apparently on the point of springing back into the machine and going off, when a sudden mood of facetiousness, caused by relief from the strain he had endured, came to him. He turned to old Sam, and smiled; at the same time remarking:
“Well, old grandfather, and now we shall be all right, isn’t it?”
He came close up to Sam, and then suddenly started back.
“Gott!” he cried. “Paul Jouperts!”
Sam gazed at him, bewildered, and the madman started talking to him in some foreign tongue. Sam shook his head.
“You no right,” he remarked, “to come bargin’ through they swedes of Mr. Dodge’s.”
And then the aviator behaved in a most peculiar manner. He came up and examined his face very closely, and gave a gentle tug at his beard and hair, as if to see whether it were real or false.