Chapter XII. Pelted by Hailstones - Page 2

can't you?"

"Science cannot be cheerful when foretelling events of a dire nature," was the response. "I would not do my duty if I did not hold to my theories."

"Well, just hold to them a little more closely," suggested Mr. Damon. "Don't tell them to us so often, and have them get on our nerves, Parker, my dear man. Bless my nail-file! be more cheerful. And that reminds me, when are we going to have dinner, Tom?"

"Whenever you want it, Mr. Damon. Are you going to act as cook again?"

"I think I will, and I'll just go to the galley now, and see about getting a meal. It will take my mind off the dreadful things Mr. Parker says."

But if the gloomy scientific man heard this little "dig" he did not respond to it. He was busy jotting down figures on a piece of paper, multiplying and dividing them to get at some result in a complicated problem he was working on, regarding the power of an iceberg in proportion to its size, to exert a lateral pressure when sliding down a grade of fifteen per cent.

Mr. Damon got an early dinner, as they had breakfasted almost at dawn that morning, in order to get a good start. The meal was much enjoyed, and to Abe Abercrombie was quite a novelty, for he had never before partaken of food so high up in the air, the barograph of the Red Cloud showing an elevation of a little over twelve thousand feet.

"It's certainly great," the old miner observed, as he looked down toward the earth below them, stretched out like some great relief map. "It sure is wonderful an' some scrumptious! I never thought I'd be ridin' one of these critters. But they're th' only thing t' git t' this hidden valley with. We might prospect around for a year, and be driven back by the Indians and Eskimos a dozen times. But with this we can go over their heads, and get all the gold we want."

"Is there enough to give every one all he wants?" asked Tom, with a quizzical smile. "I don't know that I ever had enough."

"Me either," added Ned Newton.

"Oh, there's lots of gold there," declared the old miner. "The thing to do is to get it and we can sure do that now."

The remainder of the day passed uneventfully, though Tom cast anxious looks at the weather as night set in, and Ned, noting his chum's uneasiness, asked:

"Worrying about anything, Tom?"

"Yes, I am," was the reply. "I think we're in for a hard storm, and I don't know just how the airship will behave up in these northern regions. It's getting much colder, and the gas in the bag is condensing more than I thought it would. I will have to increase our speed to keep us moving along at this elevation."

The motor was adjusted to give more power, and, having set it so that it, as well as the