Brady moved one of the levers, and the ease and certainty with which the air-ship swung to the new direction brought Matt's admiration uppermost. Never had he been able to resist the lure of untried machinery, and here was an experience so novel that it carried him out of his troubled environment, so to speak. For a moment, suspended in that starlit void and swimming noiselessly through the night, he yielded himself to the fascinations of the new experience.
"How powerful a motor have you?" he asked.
"Ten horse-power," answered Brady, "and it weighs forty pounds."
"How do you steer the machine up and down, and right and left?"
"That's where I've got the bulge on Jerrold. One rudder with two cross-section planes does all of that. This lever here—I don't know whether you can see it or not from where you stand—gives the up and down 'dip' to the rudder that makes the machine rise or fall. By moving the lever right or left, the air-ship turns in the corresponding direction."
"Take me back," ordered Matt, "and land me at the place where you took me from."
"You've got a picture of me doing that!" scoffed Brady. "Now that I've caught you, I'm going to keep you, see? You're just the sort of a lad I need in my business. Grove and Needham, when they finally got back to South Chicago with the air-ship, told me all about you. If I'd known what I do now at the time you called at the balloon house, I'd have taken a different tack."
A muttered imprecation came from Pete. He was thinking of his fall over the barrel.
"Those fellows got back without breaking their necks, did they?" queried Matt.
"Just about. When they told me what had happened, I sent off that telegram."