“Hul—hulloo, there!” he said, faintly.
Neither answered. Zorn gave a start, and Hagle cowered like a whipped dog; but the lips of neither moved.
With some difficulty Poke got upon his feet.
“Hul—hulloo!” he repeated. “Say, but you fellows must be thinking a lot to say so little!”
At that Zorn, with a warning glance at Hagle, loosed his grip on the latter’s collar.
“Eh? Say so little? There’s a lot to say and ask.” Zorn, having found his tongue, could employ it briskly. “Great Scott! but what have you been up to? You come smashing into us, almost, and then want to know why we don’t make speeches? Look here! What have you been doing? What in the name of all crazy cats is that thing you were riding on?”
Poke turned to glance ruefully at the wreck of the Saracen.
“Oh, that? That’s a—a—er—er—that’s a machine I’ve been fooling with.”
“Umph! Looks more as if it had fooled with you.” Zorn came forward, and gazed with undisguised interest at the ruin. “Umph! Guess I know what this is—or was. Somebody tipped me off the other day that you were monkeying with a flying machine. But I didn’t think you had gumption to do anything with it. But you didn’t fly here, did you?”
“Not exactly,” Poke told him with a degree of dignity. “I—I—well, I came on wheels, as you might say.”