fleece hung out to dry--alighting here
and there, the little firefly, in other words
the atomy electric battery attached to
the precious record, trying so hard, with the
parachute's aid, to find its way back to
earth from the lonely height it had reached.

Another quarter of a minute, and they
could trace the outline of the black silk
parachute, itself, a drifting crow with
their prize in its claws; that prize which
the inventor, at least, would have given
ten years of his life to grasp--if, grasping
it, he could see that the little pencil
had duly made its record markings--the
proof that his Thunder Bird had "got
there."

"Glory halleluiah! it's drifting down
right into our laps--into the old mountain's
lap, rather! The wind won't carry
it far, I bet! 'T will land within quarter
of a mile of us, anyhow," shrieked the
professor's young assistant, a college boy,
an athlete, who had led the quarter-mile
sprint on many a hard-won field, when
[[238]]

p237 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p238w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p239

v?