headlight challenging the heavens themselves
to stop it, with its comet-like tail
of red fire streaming out full twenty feet
behind it.

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 space.

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.

[[236]]

p235 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p236w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p237

v?