The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men Part 22

"Do you suppose he's got three?" Anton asked. This was amazing riches, three kites. All the boys knew what a tremendous amount of careful and exacting work went into the making of even one of them.

Out darted Tom and laid a third and then a fourth kite on the ground.

The four great kites, each of them with the forward part white and the rear section painted black, made a n.o.ble showing in the afternoon sun.

Ralph, with his ever-ready camera, stepped forward.

"Wait a minute," said Tom, "I've got another one," and he darted into the house to get it. He returned a moment later with a fifth kite, similar in every detail to the other four and then, readily enough, posed beside the kites for his picture. Overhead flew the Stars and Stripes.

"I want that for the _Review_," said Fred.

"What are you going to do, Tom?" asked Ross.

Tom hesitated a moment and then announced:

"I'm going to try for a world's record!"

The audacity of this startled the boys for a moment, and then a shout went up, while word was pa.s.sed around the crowd that Issaquena County was going to try for the kite record of the world.

The first kite, which no one but Tom and the Forecaster had yet seen in flight, took the air and was off. Tom gave it four hundred feet of line and then fastened his second kite, which he let run up until eight hundred feet more of the line was out. The wind was now stronger, registering twenty-two miles an hour. The three lower kites were run in tandem, about two hundred feet of line apart. When the last of the five kites was still on the ground, the topmost one was out of sight, and the kites were carrying only a fraction of the weight of wire that their lifting surface could bear.

"I'm afraid of it, sir," said Tom, his finger on the wire that was running from the reel, "it doesn't feel right."

"Probably your lower kite is in gusts," the Forecaster answered. "Let her go up, there may be calmer wind higher. Fasten on your three small ones, now, Tom; you might as well have all the sail area that you can."

The eighth kite was started on its journey upwards. Only those with the strongest eyes now could see the second group of three, the first pair was far out of sight.

With Anton carefully measuring the angle of alt.i.tude and giving Tom the figures in a low voice, Tom, watching the registering apparatus on the reel, suddenly announced:

"Two miles up!"

The reel rattled merrily as the line was paid out, the brake keeping it at exactly a uniform pressure under Tom's skillful guiding.

"Two miles and a half!"

The crowd began to press around the reel. Nothing was visible in the air, now, nothing but a thin piece of wire leading up into the sky. Had no one known that the kites were there, high above the clouds, it would have seemed like black magic. Some of the superst.i.tious negroes began to mutter among themselves.

"Three miles!"

The boys yelled in delight.

"Up with her, Tom!" cried Fred.

"It's the amateur world's record!" announced the Forecaster.

The words were scarcely out of his lips when there came a sudden sharp crack. The kite-wire snapped close by the reel and as it curled on itself the coils appeared to run up into the sky.

"Gone! My kites are gone!" cried Tom, and a perfect howl of disappointment went up from all the boys.

"Gone!" cried the Forecaster, "of course they're gone, but we're going after them!"

Throwing himself on the back of an old mule which a darky had ridden to the kite ground, he started full tilt after the disappearing wire, the whole membership of the League streaming at his heels.

CHAPTER VI

DEFEATING THE FROST

Out across fields and woods, the Forecaster leading on the old mule, the boys followed the direction of the kite. Bob's pocket compa.s.s held them true to their course and Tom's keen sense told of any shift of the wind.

The boys ran fast, the mule ran faster, and La.s.sie and Rex ran faster still. Only Anton, the crippled lad, had stayed behind.

Midway up the first hill, Fatty dropped out. His intentions were good, but he was no match for the others in running. Monroe, the athlete of the group, was swinging along in light springy strides; Bob, the silent, ran heavily and mechanically; while Tom, eager for the recovery of his kites, kept to the front with the other two.

The Forecaster checked his mule and let the boys come up to him.

"It's no use trying to outrace the kites, boys," he said, "they're dropping in any case. But as they were three miles up, they were also three miles to leeward, and as they won't fall like a stone but float down gently, it'll be another mile or two at least before they strike ground. So you've a five mile run ahead of you and you'd better settle down into a jog trot, for you can never keep up this pace."

The faces of the boys fell at the thought of a five mile run, for while they were all strong and vigorous, cross-country running was not one of their regular sports.

Ross turned to the younger boys of the party, calling them by name.

"You'd better drop out," he said kindly; "you won't be able to keep it up and there's no use getting yourselves worn out and then having to walk back, half dead. Fred," he continued, turning to the editor-in-chief, "you'd better quit, too."

"Not much," answered Fred, "I've got to write this up for the _Review_."

The Forecaster smiled. He liked pluck.

"All right, my boy," he said, "come along, if you want to. Still, I think Ross is right."

Over fields and woods they ran, but it was an hour before Bob, lean, wiry and silent, pointed to the sky.

"Kite!" he said.

The weather expert pulled up the mule and drew out his field gla.s.ses.

"Yes," he said, "that's the string of kites, sure enough. But they're going up, boys, not coming down."

"Going up, sir?" exclaimed Tom. "They couldn't be! They must be coming down. All the kites were out of sight when the wire broke."

"They have come down, of course," the Forecaster replied, "but they're certainly going up now. And, what's more, they're going up fast."

"But they can't be!" the boy protested. "The wire isn't holding on to anything."

"How do you know?" the meteorologist rejoined. "Perhaps the wire has got foul of something. I remember, once, how Eddy of Bayonne had a string of nine kites get away from him. They crossed the water between New Jersey and Staten Island. The owner had to take a train and then a small boat after them. On Staten Island he took another train and then a street car, and another street car, all the time hanging out of the window, to keep track of the fugitives, which were sailing away merrily."

"Chasing a kite with a train and a street-car sounds funny," puffed Tom.

"On Staten Island," the Forecaster continued, "the wire caught in a telegraph post, and, of course, as soon as the wire held, the kites took the proper angle to the wind and shot up in the air again. Before Eddy could reach the place, the wire chafed through and broke again, but the kites had risen another mile or more. Falling diagonally, they crossed the lower end of New York Bay toward Long Island. Eddy had to take a ferry boat, next, to chase the runaways. He crossed to New York and took the elevated railroad to Brooklyn. An hour later, he caught sight of the kites again. One of the groups had reached the ground and dragged. That sent the other six up in the air again. They flew over the whole of Brooklyn and fell again, finally entangling themselves in a telephone wire. When the owner finally reached them, after a chase of thirty miles, in two States, three of the kites, still undamaged, were flying safely in the air, never having come to ground at all."