Pemrose Lorry, Camp Fire Girl Part 20

At lightning speed,--fifty miles the first minute, a hundred the next,--it leaped from its mountain platform straight up--bound for the vacant lot of s.p.a.ce.

Explosion after bright explosion tore the cloud-banks as, one by one, the innumerable little rockets, which Pem had watched her father fitting into their grooves in its interior--far back in that quiet laboratory--went off.

And with each radiant roar higher--faster--it dashed, the little Thunder Bird, with never a puff of smoke to dim the spectacle--the transplendency of its flight.

"Michty! Michty!... _Magerful!_"

There was just the one skirl from Andrew, to lend it music on its upward way; he had not thought that he came to America to witness a thing like this.

"Magerful", indeed! Magical, indeed! The others were silent, swept away by the magic of it--the greater, moon-storming magic to come.

Only--only, they breathlessly asked themselves: "What next?"

Well! the immediate "next" would be the return of the golden egg, the diary, the falling fruit of the experiment, without which there was no proof of its success--of how high the fiery Bird had flown--before, its last automatic charge expended, it sang its swan-song somewhere in s.p.a.ce.

At the increasing speed with which the little Thunder Bird flew--when miles were but a moment--the record might be expected back in a few minutes.

Minutes--but they seemed a moon's age!

It was Una--Una--who saw it first: the tiny speck of star-dust drifting down, down among the woolly clouds--dark as if the night had been shorn and its fleece hung out to dry--alighting here and there, the little firefly, in other words the atomy electric battery attached to the precious record, trying so hard, with the parachute's aid, to find its way back to earth from the lonely height it had reached.

Another quarter of a minute, and they could trace the outline of the black silk parachute, itself, a drifting crow with their prize in its claws; that prize which the inventor, at least, would have given ten years of his life to grasp--if, grasping it, he could see that the little pencil had duly made its record markings--the proof that his Thunder Bird had "got there."

"Glory halleluiah! it's drifting down right into our laps--into the old mountain's lap, rather! The wind won't carry it far, I bet! 'Twill land within quarter of a mile of us, anyhow," shrieked the professor's young a.s.sistant, a college boy, an athlete, who had led the quarter-mile sprint on many a hard-won field, when the racing honor of a school was at stake; and he ran as never before to get the better of the tricky gusts and seize the parachute--faster, even, than the nick.u.m, that mysterious youth, had run, when he saved the day for the mountain team at baseball.

"Hoot mon! Dinna ye let it get away frae ye into the dar-rk woods!"

skirled Andrew, equally excited, and filled with awe of the raven parachute now springing, like a great, black mushroom, out of the night--and of the firefly which had been up so high.

"Oh! it is--it is drifting towards the dark spruce woods--where we'll have hard work to find it."

In the wild chase after the prize, Pemrose made a good third, as she thus shouted her fear.

"See--oh! see, it _is_ landing," she cried again, "c-coming down--touching earth."

Yes! for one fleeting instant it did alight upon a mound, the shooting starlet, the little electric dry cell, winking brilliantly against the background of somber evergreens, now dark as Erebus, that girdle old Greylock's crown.

Then, freakish firefly, there, it was off again, the prey of the nick.u.m gusts, before ever a hand could touch it--the black parachute rotating like a whirligig.

Never--oh, never--was such a chase for such a prize since mountain was mountain and man was man!

Once again the steely clog, the weight of the five-inch box containing the recording apparatus, the precious log, almost dragged it to a standstill! But the summit gusts were strong.

Even the college boy began to have heart-quakes and Pemrose heart-sinkings.

"Jove! What a stunt you're pulling off on us, you old black crow of a parachute--you b.o.o.by-headed umbrella!" groaned he. "C-can't you stay put for just a second? Or are you bent on leading us a dance through the woods?"

He began to lose hope of its landing in his lap, that breezy athlete, as it made straight for the jaws of darkness now, the inky spruce-belt--the parachute coquetting with its pursuers, like a great black fan.

Was--was it the wind then?

Something--something caught it up, the golden log--the first record from s.p.a.ce--something s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and whisked it off, off into those blackamoor woods, while the feet of the foremost runner were still many yards away.

"'Twas na the wind! 'Twas mon or deil; I saw it loop out frae the boggart trees!" roared Andrew.

And now in his skirl there was a wild ring of superst.i.tion that turned girlish hearts quite cold.

"I saw it loup out frae the dark--dar-rk woods!" he insisted hoa.r.s.ely.

Ah! but those dim spruce woods were faintly illumined now with strange little dots and dashes of light--the firefly winking pa.s.sionately, as if somebody, some thief, were running with it.

And _they_ ran, too, its rightful owners, in full cry, calling frantically upon the robber, whether thief, or tempest, to stop.

And the girls kept bravely up with the men. Or one of them did! For all the spice of her chowchow name was afire in Pemrose Lorry now; and she would have tackled the thief, single-handed, to get back her father's record.

Into the core of darkness--in among the ebony spruce-boughs--the jetty, frowning trunks, the snarling, brambly underbrush, dashed the chase, the hue and cry, not daring to turn on a flashlight and in its glare lose the one little piloting blink ahead, which now seemed to have considerable odds on them, as it fled helter-skelter through the woods.

"My word! this--this beats anything I ever dr-reamed of," gurgled the college boy. "The Thing, whatever it is, has us nicely fooled.

There--there, it has switched off the 'glim' now--the little, telltale battery. Now--where are we?"

No one could tell, as they floundered about, three men, and two girls, in the mysterious night-woods--without a clew--Pemrose clinging desolately to her father now, Una to hers--while Andrew, the Church Elder, muttered weird Highland curses.

n.o.body could tell where they were, indeed, figuratively, of course, except--except that the experiment was a failure, so far as any proof to the World was concerned!

Except that Toandoah's hopes were dashed,--if not broken!

The first record from s.p.a.ce was stolen,--or lost.

CHAPTER XX

THE SEARCH

No! She did not think the nick.u.m had taken it,--that mysterious Jack at a Pinch!

This is what the bleeding heart of Pemrose told her over and over again within the next twenty-four hours,--and after that, too!

True, she had robbed him of his oars and a dance,--or had been responsible for the trick!

She had not made her scout-knights return those ashen blades until the morning after the dance, when they were surrept.i.tiously deposited upon the opposite sh.o.r.e of the lake in the neighborhood of the camp near the insects' egg-boats.

And she had enjoyed herself hugely as the guest of the White Birch Group at the wind-up of the June carnival, while he, twice a rescuer, a friend in a pinch, was drifting helplessly out upon the dark night-waters of the Bowl, trying to paddle with his hands, within hearing of the festive dance music, until some good Samaritan from his own sh.o.r.e rowed out and gave him a homeward tow.

But all this, as the girl pa.s.sionately told herself, was an everyday trick,--just a paper pellet thrown at one beside the overwhelming blow of the loss of her father's record.

And he who could quote Shakespeare upon "Something rotten in the state of Denmark", amid the horrors of a zero train-wreck, who "liked his excitement warm", had a sense of humor.