The Boy Scouts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition Part 13

"Oh! I expected to put in say an hour or so with you, Rob; and then later on I hope you'll make your way over to the aviation field, where you'll just as like as not find me hanging around, still picking up points."

"That's a bargain, then, is it?" demanded Rob.

"Just as you say," Hiram declared. "I guess now I c'n hit on the fust thing our chum Andy here'll be wantin' to do. I've been watchin' him stare at that old arm every time she rose up with the car; and I see we're headin' that way right fast now."

"Yes, it's a good idea to take that trip the first thing," said Rob, "because you get a comprehensive idea of the lay of the land that serves you better than any map you can buy. They don't stay up very long, though, because there are more dollars waiting to be picked up from the crowd that's always in line to occupy the car."

"Three hundred and sixty-five feet up is going some," muttered Hiram. "I hope now they don't have any accident to the machinery while we're taking our look. I must see how they work this trick; it ought to be interesting."

He would have started to carry out this intention then and there only that Andy held on to his coat and would not let go.

"The machinery part can keep, Hiram," the impatient one declared. "Some time when you're alone poke around all you like; but my tastes run in another channel. You're like the geologists, with your nose pointed toward the ground all the while; I'm built more after the style of the astronomers who keep looking up and see the glories of the firmament that beat the fossils all hollow."

"H'm! you don't say!" was all the remark Hiram made, but it contained considerable skepticism concerning Andy's sweeping a.s.sertion.

They fell in line, and were fortunate enough to be able to get aboard without having to wait, as they might have done later in the afternoon.

"This thing must have cost a raft of money to build; it beats the old Ferris Wheel to pieces, I should think; and that was a wonder in its day."

"Yes," said Andy, "but think of the money they must take in, running it all the time from February up to December. Why, I should think they'd have millions of pa.s.sengers in that time, and at so much a head it would be like a regular gold mine."

About that time the car was closed and locked, so that by no mischance could any reckless pa.s.senger be tempted to jump when it was high in the air, so as to accomplish a spectacular suicide.

"And they've got the windows screened in, too," remarked Andy.

"They knew you were coming, I kinder guess, and wanted to make sure you wouldn't lose your head up there so as to fall overboard," Hiram told him.

The car was crowded, so that they could not see who all of their fellow pa.s.sengers were. There was also considerable shouting going on, some of those aboard bidding farewell to friends who had been unable to make that trip, as though they fully expected to keep right on going up, once they got started toward the blue heavens overhead, until they landed in Glory.

"Here she goes!" announced Andy, eagerly, as the car was felt to vibrate.

With that they left the ground and commenced to ascend. The motion was fairly steady, as the weights on the other end of the great seesaw had been adjusted to correspond to the number of those in the car, so that after all the engine did not have a great deal of hard work to do in lifting that load.

"Whee! I only hope none of the balancing weight slips off!" said Hiram, who appeared to be rather nervous.

"I'm surprised at you, Hiram," remarked Rob; "it seems queer for a fellow who aspires to be a bold air pilot some of these fine days, and who has even been up several times as high as three thousand feet, to be shivering with fear now, when at the most we're only going to get three hundred odd feet from the ground."

"Oh, well, that's a horse of a different color," Hiram explained; "when you're up in an aeroplane it depends on your own self whether you come down safe, or have an accident. In this case you haven't got a single thing to do with it, but just trust to a mechanic, who may be as reliable as they make 'em, but could make a mistake just once. That's what gets my goat; my efficiency don't count for a cent in this game."

"Well, there is something in that," Rob admitted; "but let's try to find a place and look out as we keep on rising. Already the view seems to be getting pretty fine."

There was more or less talking and laughing and all that in the car, for when there happens to be a spice of danger connected with any of these amus.e.m.e.nts many people become half hysterical.

The view was, indeed, becoming grand, as Rob had said, and both boys were soon copying Andy, who was staring first one way and then another, as sea and sh.o.r.e began to be spread out before him like a Mercator's chart.

Although the huge arm of the giant Aeroscope had by no means reached the upper limit of its sweep, the great buildings lying below had the appearance of squatty "ant-heaps," as Andy termed them; and the crowds that swarmed many of the walks of the Exposition looked so minute that it was hard to believe they were human beings.

All at once, the working arm of the big seesaw stopped with a rude jerk that caused a number of girls aboard to give vent to cries of alarm. Even strong men had a nervous look on their faces, Rob immediately noticed.

"What's this mean?" demanded Hiram, laying a hand on Rob's arm.

"We haven't reached the highest sweep yet, I'm dead sure," complained Andy, in a petulant tone, just as though he believed the management meant to cheat those aboard out of the full benefit of their money. "We want a better view than this. All the others went to the top, and I don't see why we shouldn't, too."

"Rob, this stop wasn't meant, was it?" demanded Hiram, insistent as usual.

"Don't talk so loud, Hiram," he was advised. "You'll only frighten those girls all the more if they happen to hear you. No, I don't believe it was intended that we stop this far up, and with such a b.u.mp, too."

"But is there any real danger of an accident? I wouldn't care so much if I had my new-fangled parachute with me, and could only get outside; for even if the old car did drop, I'd be able to sail down like a feather."

"Danger-of course not a bit," Rob told him sternly. "You don't suppose the managers of this big Exposition would allow a mechanical affair like this Aeroscope to be run day after day unless the owners had made it absolutely accident proof. Just hold your horses and we'll soon be moving again."

"Yes, and Hiram," said Andy just then, "don't put yourself on a par with those silly screeching girls over there, who are hugging each other so.

Poor things, they don't know any better! But you're a scout, Hiram, and have been taught never to show the white feather. Brace up! You're wearing khaki right now, and for the sake of the cloth show yourself a man!"

That brought Hiram to a realization of the fact that he was indeed hardly proving himself a worthy scout. He pretended to be indifferent.

"Shucks! who cares?" he exclaimed. "I do wish them girls'd let up on their racket; it gets on a feller's nerves to hear 'em shriek that way."

"Well, I know what ails the old thing!" suddenly announced Andy, with a grin on his face that told how his love for joking exceeded any faint feeling of alarm that may have seized upon him.

"Let's hear it, then!" demanded Rob.

"Oh, if you had only guessed it before we started it would have saved lots of bother!" called out Hiram.

"They miscalculated the weight, you see!" continued Andy. "Some fellows are so deceptive in their looks. Now right across from us there's a fat boy with his back turned this way, and staring hard out of the window. I bet you they figured wrong on him, and that's why we've got stuck up here four-fifths of the way to the top."

The other two now looked, and owing to some of the pa.s.sengers in the car crowding together an opening was made like a little lane. At the end of this they discovered, just as Andy had said, an exceedingly fat boy occupying more than his share of s.p.a.ce, with his chubby legs braced under him, and his face pressed against the heavy wire netting that covered the open windows.

Rob stared, and looked more closely. He half opened his mouth to make some sort of remark, and then as though seized with a second thought, refrained.

"Do you really think so, Andy?" asked Hiram, in a half-awed way, as though he actually took some stock in the ridiculous a.s.sertion made by the other.

"Well, tell me a better explanation if you know one!" demanded Andy, which was a queer way of clinching an argument.

"Then the quickest way to mend matters would be for you to go over there and toss the heavy-weight overboard, don't you think, Andy?" asked Rob, entering into the spirit of the joke, especially since he really believed he held the whip-hand over the fun-loving Andy.

"Huh! think so, do you, Rob?" said Andy, making out as though he felt in a fighting humor. "Well, now, perhaps that would be the easiest way to fix things. I've got a good mind to try it. Watch my smoke, Hiram!"

With that he actually squared himself, rolled up the sleeves of his coat, and even started across the car. Hiram turned pale. He seemed to forget that there was no possible way in which any one inside the car could manage to effect their escape so long as the great arm of the giant seesaw was elevated in the air.

"Rob, are you going to stand for that?" he burst out.

"No use trying to stop him now, Hiram," he was told.

"But look at him squaring off, Rob, like he really means it!" cried Hiram. "It would be just like Andy, he's so rash, you know, to get us all arrested. What if he did knock that fat boy off the car! Why, Rob, don't you see the sudden jolt when the weight was changed might make us fly up, and bring about a catastrophe?"

"That's so, it might, Hiram," said Rob, trying hard to keep a straight face.