Chapter XIX

A RECORD FLIGHT

It had come at last, that starless night,
that stupendous night of which Pemrose
had dreamed for a year, as she perched
on a laboratory stool and watched her
father at work, when the little Thunder
Bird, the smaller rocket, would take its
experimenting flight, its preliminary canter,
up a couple of hundred miles, or so, into
the air,--and on into thin space.

Most dashing explorer ever was,
it would keep a diary, or log, of its flying
trip.

But whereas travelers, hitherto, had
carried that up a sleeve or in a breast-pocket,
it would have its journal in its
cone-shaped head; the little openwork
box, five inches square, with the tapelike
paper winding from one to another
of the wheels within and the tiny pencil
making shorthand markings, curve or dash,
as the air pressed upon it, until it got
[[229]]

p228 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p229w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p230

v?