THROUGH A STORM IN A BALLOON

On awaking Bob was a little confused. But soon he remembered where he was, and he sat up and blinked and looked around for his companion. Fitz Mee stood upon the locker, a tiny binocular glued to his pop eyes, gazing intently at the western horizon. It was gray daylight, and they were making good speed.

“What’s the matter, Fitz?” Bob demanded, alert and interested at once. “What’re you looking at?”

“Looking at a storm gathering,” the goblin replied, without turning his head.

The boy rose to his feet, removed his fur coat, and wadded it into a ball and stuffed it into the locker.

“Storm?” he said. “I don’t see any signs of a storm.”

“Don’t you see that blue line along the horizon?” Fitz asked.

“Yes. Is that the storm?”

“No; that’s the mountains we crossed. But take this glass and you can see the storm gathering on their tops. See it?”

[44]

“My!” Bob exclaimed, the glass to his eyes. “I guess I do see it! It’s a black one, too; and it’s moving this way. How soon will it overtake us?”

This question he asked in some trepidation.

“It won’t overtake us at all, unless we care to have it do so,” the goblin made answer.

“Why, can we outrun it?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Sure, if we want to.”

“Well, we’ll want to, won’t we?”

“It’ll be fun to wait till it’s nearly upon us and then run away from it, I think. Don’t you?”

“I—I don’t know,” Bob returned, dubiously shaking his head, his gaze still riveted upon the rising storm; “it might not be fun.”

“You’re afraid,” sneered the goblin.

“No, I’m—I’m not.”

“Yes, you are; you’re a coward.”

“Don’t you call me that!” the lad cried, snatching the binocular from his eyes and angrily turning upon his Companion.

“I won’t,” the goblin promised. “Now turn your glass toward the east. What do you see?”

“I see the sea!” Bob cried rapturously.

[45]
“It’s plain to me as plain can be—
In fact, I see you see the sea,”

hummed Fitz Mee in sing-song. Then he continued:

“If you’ll take a glance at the ground beneath us, you’ll notice we’re moving very slowly. I’m loitering—waiting for the storm to catch up with us; then we’ll have a race with it, out across the ocean. In the meantime we’ll have breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Bob questioned. “Where’s breakfast coming from?”

“From the locker,” smiled the goblin, rubbing his round little belly and smacking his lips in anticipatory gusto, “where everything else we need’ll come from. I always keep my air-ship stored for a long voyage, for when I leave Goblinland on business, I never know when I’ll get back home again. Are you hungry?”

“You bet!” was the lad’s expressive but inelegant rejoinder.

“Well, what do you think you need this morning? You can have whatever you require.”

“What do I think I need?” Bob tittered. “What a question! I need breakfast, of course, Fitz.”

[46]

“Of course,” snapped the goblin. “But do you need muscle food, or nerve food, or fat food, or what?”

“I—I don’t know,” stammered the boy, scratching his head in perplexity. “I never heard of such things, I guess. I know what I’d like, though; I’d like steak and gravy and hot biscuits, and some fruit and a glass of milk.”

“Huh!” the goblin snorted in supreme contempt. “You’ll find, Bob, we don’t indulge in such indigestible truck in Goblinland. Our foods are scientifically prepared, not slapped together haphazard. We use nothing but the concentrated extracts—the active principals of food stuffs. I’ll show you.”

He went to the locker and brought forth a small leather hand-case or satchel.

“Why—why,” Bob muttered, his eyes bulging, “that looks just like papa’s medicine-case!”

“Well, it isn’t,” Fitz Mee grunted irritably; “it’s my portable pantry.”

And he loosened the catch and flung the case open, displaying several rows of tiny bottles containing tablets and pellets of various shapes, sizes and colors.

“Ugh!” the boy gagged. “Pills!”

“They’re not pills,” rasped the goblin; “they’re food tablets and drink pellets.”

[47]

“They’re pills to me, all the same.”

“They’re not pills, I tell you,” Fitz Mee reiterated sharply, snapping his jaws shut and angrily grating his teeth. “Now I’ll select what you’re to eat; and you’ll eat it. The storm’s approaching rapidly; I hear the thunder muttering and see the black clouds rolling. So you’ll need something to make you strong and courageous. Here’s a tiger-muscle tablet and a lion-heart tablet. Down ’em.”

Bob shut his mouth and shook his head.

“Down ’em!” the goblin repeated.

“Uk-uh!” the lad grunted.

“You must!”

“I won’t!”

“You’ll starve if you don’t eat.”

“I’d rather starve than take pills.”

“Nonsense!”

“I would!”

“It won’t take you but a second to swallow ’em, Bob,” Fitz Mee said coaxingly. “That’s one of the advantages of our kind of food; it don’t take long to eat a meal.”

“I never begrudged the time I spent in eating,” Bob remarked, with rather a sickly grin.

“Well, down the tablets—that’s a good boy.”

“Are those—those things all you’ve got to eat?”

[48]

“Yes.”

“And don’t you have anything else in Goblinland?”

“No, of course not.”

“Oh, dear!” wailed the boy. “I wish I was back home! Nothing to eat but pills! Golly!”

“There, there, Bob!” the goblin said soothingly, kindly even. “You don’t wish you were back home; you’re just hungry and nervous. Take these tablets and you’ll be all right in a jiffy.”

Bob silently held out his hand, his face a picture of lugubrious woe, and silently took the tablets and swallowed them.

Fitz Mee idly fingered the tiny bottles in the case for a minute or two, mumbling over the names upon the labels. Then he looked up and asked:

“Feel better, Bob?”

“Yes,” the lad admitted rather reluctantly, “I feel stronger and better, but I’m still awful empty.”

“But you’re not hungry?”

“No; just hollow-like.”

“That’s because you’ve been used to filling your stomach with gross food,” the goblin stated sagely; “you’ll get over that condition after you’ve lived on tablets and pellets a month or two.”

“A month or two!” the lad groaned. “Oh, dear!”

[49]

“You haven’t had anything to drink,” Fitz remarked, smiling brightly. “Take this pellet.”

“What is it?”

“A water pellet. It contains a pint of water.”

“That teenty-weenty thing?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“It does.”

“I don’t believe it; it can’t.”

“You down it and you’ll soon see.”

Bob took the tiny clear pellet and instantly announced:

“My thirst’s all gone, Fitz, and I feel fuller.”

“But you’re still a little lank—a little empty-like, eh?”

“A little, yes.”

“Well, I’ll fix you. Take this.”

“Oh, stop,” the boy demurred. “I’m not going to take all the pills in that case.”

“This is the last dose I’ll ask you to take,” the goblin returned, batting his eyes at a bright flash of lightning from the rapidly approaching storm.

“Well, what is it?” Bob demanded, dodging the sharp clap of thunder almost immediately following the lightning.

“A sponge tablet.”

[50]

“What’s it for?”

“It’s to absorb some of the water you’ve taken, and to swell and fill your stomach.”

“I don’t want it—I don’t need it,” Bob said, decidedly shaking his head.

“All right,” Fitz laughed, “you don’t have to take it. We just make ’em for folks who aren’t satisfied unless their stomachs are full all the time. Now I’ll eat my breakfast.”

He hastily selected and swallowed a number of tablets and pellets; then he closed the leather case with a bang and a snap and thrust it into the locker.

“Now,” he smiled, “I guess we’re all ready to play tag with that tempest. And we’ll show it a thing or two—oh, won’t we!”

“Maybe it’ll show us a thing or two,” Bob replied, grinning a sickly grin and shaking his head dubiously. “It’s getting pretty close and I don’t like the looks of it. My! Just see those clouds rolling and whirling! Fitz, I believe it’s a cyclone!”

“No, it isn’t,” his companion muttered contemptuously; “it’s nothing but a summer thunder gust.”

By this time the storm was close upon them, coming swiftly. The lightning was forking and flashing incessantly; the thunder was crackling and crashing continuously. Bob gazed at the rolling, tumbling masses of black clouds, at the play of electricity, and the[51] forest and fruit trees bending before the blast, and shivered; he listened to the mingled, indescribable uproar of booming thunder and bellowing wind, and shuddered.

“Oh, let’s be off, Fitz!” he pleaded.

“We’re off!” his comrade cried, giving a half turn to the thumb-screw of the selector.

Before the raging storm they sped, the boy frightened and miserable, the goblin elated and jubilant. Rapidly they approached the ocean, and soon they were sailing over a city on the shore. Binocular in hand, Bob watched the storm behind and the earth beneath, and trembled. He saw people rushing to shelter; saw fences and groves leveled, and skyscrapers and steeples sent crashing to earth.

“Oh, Fitz—Fitz!” the lad groaned. “It is a cyclone!”

“I guess it is,” the goblin answered nonchalantly.

“And it’s coming closer!” the boy cried in terror. “Let’s go faster!”

“Oh, this is all right; this is fine sport,” the goblin laughed, capering about the car and gleefully rubbing his hands.

Out over the ocean they flew—out of sight of land—out over the boundless expanse of heaving, tossing waters. After them raced the storm, each minute drawing a little nearer and a little nearer. It was almost upon them!

[52]

“Please, please let’s go faster, Fitz!” Bob screeched, dancing up and down in an ecstacy of keen affright.

But his shrill cry was whirled away in the tumult of rushing air that enveloped them, and if the goblin heard, which is doubtful, he paid no attention to his companion’s frantic plea. Then of a sudden the balloon stopped with a smart jerk and began to whirl round and round dizzily. Fitz Mee’s fat face went white as paper, and he let out a cry of alarm and dismay.

“What’s the matter, Fitz?” Bob bawled, staggering to his comrade’s side and shouting in his ear. “What’s the matter?”

“The lightning has magnetized the selector!” the goblin bellowed. “Look at the needle—pointing right back toward the storm! We’re drifting right back into it! There is nothing now to prevent it!”

[53]

It was too true!

Immediately they were engulfed—overwhelmed in the maelstrom of cloud and wind and rain. They could neither see nor hear for the fury of the elements. The balloon spun round and round like a top; the light car jerked and swayed and shot this way and that with lightning-like and awful suddenness. One of the small ropes supporting it broke and hung dangling from the side. Another parted and the car sagged dangerously. A frightful lurch and Fitz Mee was flung upon the locker, the breath knocked out of him; another lurch, and, with a despairing scream that sounded above the deafening tumult of the tornado, he rolled overboard and disappeared.

Bob threw himself into the bottom of the car, his eyes tight shut, his palms over his ears, and lay there groaning and moaning. His comrade was gone and he gave himself up for lost. Oh, how he wished he was safe at home! But in the midst of the tumultuous storm and his tumultuous thoughts a bright idea suddenly came to him. He started, he sprang to his feet and was flung flat again. Then, shaking his head and gritting his chattering teeth, he wriggled over to the air-tank and turned the cock. The hiss of the escaping air was music to him. Little by little the buffeted balloon rose, and soon it floated serenely above the zone of the warring winds and clouds. Bob was saved!

[54]

A little while he lay upon the floor of the car, looking at the clear sky overhead and wondering what he was to do. Then he thought of his lost companion, and murmured feelingly:

“Poor old Fitz! Poor old Spasms!”

As if in answer to his pitying words, he heard a voice calling faintly but snappishly:

“Bob, you rascal! Don’t you dare to call me Spasms!”

Electrified, the boy sprang to his feet and looked all around.

“Fitz!” he ejaculated. “But where can he be?” Then in superstitious fear:

“He’s dead; it must be his ghost!”

“Ghost nothing!” came the voice again, a little louder, more vigorous. “Bob, you’re a fool!”

“Is—is that you, Fitz?” the boy faltered in reply.

“Of course, dunce!”

“Well, where are you?”

“Right down here, dummy!”

Bob flew to the side of the car, hunkered upon the locker and peered over. There, a few feet down, was Fitz Mee hanging to one of the broken ropes.

“Why—why, Fitz, what are you doing down there?” Bob asked foolishly.

“Oh, just enjoying myself; surely you can see that,” the goblin[55] sneered wrathfully. “But I’ve had enough; I’m no pig. Pull me up.”

“I don’t know whether I can or not,” Bob answered. “But reach me up your hand; I’ll try.”

After a deal of struggling and kicking and grunting on the part of both, Fitz was safely aboard.

“I thought I was a goner when I fell over,” he panted; “I just happened to catch the rope.” Then, with unusual feeling: “And you saved us both, Bob, by thinking to let out the air. I couldn’t have hung on, in that storm, a minute longer; and, then the balloon was fast going to wreck. It was my foolhardiness that caused all the trouble, and your thoughtfulness that got us out of it. I’ll never go back on you, Bob, old boy, never! But now the storm’s past, we must get under way again.”

“Will the selector work?” the boy asked in some anxiety.

“It’ll be all right, now,” the goblin assured him. “See? Off we go again. And I’ll give her an extra turn for good speed; I’m keen to get along toward home. It must be the middle of the forenoon.”

For an hour or two they sailed along steadily, covering mile after mile of aërial space with the swiftness of an arrow. At last, however, Bob remarked:

“Fitz, it appears to me we’re closer to the ocean than we were[56] a while back; we must be descending. I wonder if the rain wet the feathers in the bag.”

“No,” the goblin replied positively. “They can’t get wet. They, and the bag, too, for that matter, have been treated with goose oil; and they won’t wet.”

“Won’t wet?”

“No. You know a goose’s feathers never get wet, no matter how much it goes in the water. We raise thousands of geese in Goblinland just for the feathers and the oil to treat them and our balloon bags with. We can’t be descending, Bob.”

But he stepped to the side of the car and cast his eyes upward. Then suddenly he started and collapsed upon the seat, white and trembling.

“What is it, what’s the matter, Fitz?” the lad questioned falteringly, fearing what the answer would be.

“Bob,” his companion muttered hoarsely, “we are descending! We’re lost—we’ll be drowned in the ocean! There’s a rip in the bag and the feathers are escaping one by one!”