[CHAPTER XVI.]
CONCLUSION.
"Scoot" is the only word that would fittingly describe the Hawk's return to her home port. A thirty-mile wind was directly behind her, and the propeller—which it was necessary to keep going in order to make the air ship fairly manageable—still further helped her along. Part of the time, as the three chums figured it, they were dashing through space at the rate of a mile a minute.
Overhead the skies had become black and threatening, and an occasional flash of lightning and roll of distant thunder told the boys what they were presently to expect.
That was the first time they had ever been in such a wind with the Hawk, and the first time a storm had ever threatened them while aloft. Even Matt, stout hearted as he was, felt a qualm of dread as he saw how the air craft flung onward by sheer force of the wind.
It was not more than twenty minutes from the time they left River Forest until they sighted the grimy chimneys of South Chicago.
"What're we going to do with the Hawk, mate?" shouted Ferral.
"If the balloon house hasn't been too badly dismantled," Matt answered, "we'll put the Hawk in there until the storm blows over."
By the time Matt had finished speaking, they were hard upon the big shed. But Hagenmyer's men were even then at work. The roof of the structure was gone, and its usefulness as a shelter, of course, went with roof.
"Py shinks," bellowed Carl, "I don'd like der looks oof t'ings! Ve got to do somet'ing mit der air ship, but vat it iss? Dell me, somepody!"