"What's that noise, Hawkins?" I said.

"Give it up. Something in the machinery. It's nothing."

"But I seem to feel a peculiar shaking in the machine," I persisted.

"You seem to feel a great many things that don't exist, Griggs,"

remarked Hawkins, with a touch of contempt.

"But----"

"Hey, mister!" yelled a small boy. "Hey! Yer back seat's fallin' off!"

"What did he say?" muttered Hawkins, too full of importance to turn his head.

"Hey! Hey!" cried the youngster, pursuing us. "Dat back seat's most fell off!"

"What!" shrieked Hawkins, whirling about. "Good Lord! So it is! Catch it, Griggs, catch it quick!"

I turned. The boy was right. The rear seats of the automobile had managed to detach themselves.

In fact, even as we stared, they were hanging by a single bolt, and the head of that was missing.

"Griggs! Griggs!" shouted Hawkins, wildly endeavoring to stop the engine. "Grab those seats before they fall! I didn't screw 'em on with a wrench--only used my hands--but I supposed they were fast. Heavens! If they drop, we shall go----"

Just at that moment a sudden jolt sent the seats into the road.

Two hundred pounds of solid material had left the Hawkins Auto-aero-mobile!

Hawkins didn't have to finish the sentence.

It became painfully evident where we should go.

We went up!

Up, up, up! In the suddenness of it, it seemed to me that we were shooting straight for the midday sun, that another thirty seconds would see us frying in the solar flames.

As I gripped the cushions, I believe that I shrieked with terror.

But Hawkins, scared though he was, didn't lose his head entirely. The machine hadn't turned turtle. It was ascending slowly in its normal att.i.tude, and as a matter of cold fact we hadn't risen more than thirty feet when Hawkins remarked, shakily:

"There, there, Griggs! Sit still! It's all right. We're safe!"

"Safe!" I gasped, when sufficient breath had returned. "It looks as if we were safe, doesn't it?"

"N-n-never mind how it looks, Griggs. We are. The propeller's working now."

"What good does that do us?" I demanded.

"Good!" cried the inventor, pulling himself together. "Why, we shall simply steer for the roof of a house and alight."

"Always provided that this cursed contrivance doesn't heave us out first!"

"Oh, it won't," smiled Hawkins, settling down to his machinery once more. "Dear me, Griggs, do look at the crowd!"

There was indeed a crowd. They had sprung up on the instant, and they were racing along beneath us across the common, quite regardless of the "Keep Off the Gra.s.s" signs.

"How they will stare when we step out on the roof, won't they?" observed Hawkins.

"If we don't step out on their heads!" I snapped. "Steer away from those telegraph wires, Hawkins."

"Yes, yes, of course," said the inventor, nervously regarding the thirty or forty wires strung directly across our path. "Queer this thing doesn't respond more readily!"

"Well, make her respond!" I cried, excitedly, for the wires were dangerously near.

"I'm doing my best, Griggs," grunted the inventor, twisting this wheel and pulling that lever. "Don't worry, we'll sail over them all right.

We'll just--pshaw!"

With a gentle, swaying kind of b.u.mp, the auto stopped. We had grounded, so to speak, on the telegraph wires.

"That's the end of this trial trip!" I remarked, caustically. "The epilogue will consist of the scene we create in distributing our brains over that green gra.s.s below."

"Oh, tut, tut!" said Hawkins. "This is nothing serious. I'll just start the propeller on the reverse and we'll float off backward."

"Well, wait a minute before you start it," I said. "They're shouting something."

"Don't jump! Don't jump!" cried the crowd.

"Who the d.i.c.kens is going to jump?" replied Hawkins, angrily, leaning over the side. "Fools!" he observed to me.

"The hook and ladder's coming!" continued a stentorian voice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Don't jump! Don't jump!" cried the crowd.]

"Well, they'll have their trouble for their pains," snapped Hawkins. "We shall be on the ground before they get here."

"Why not wait?" I said. "We'll be sure to get down safely that way, and you don't know what you may do by starting the machinery. The wires are all mixed up in it, and they may smash and drag us down, or upset us, Hawkins."

"Croak! Croak! Croak!" replied Hawkins, sourly. "Go on and croak till your dying day, Griggs. If any one ever offers a prize for a pessimistic alarmist, you take my advice and compete. You'll win. _I'm_ going to start the engine and get out of this."

He pulled the reverse lever, and the engine buzzed merrily. The auto indulged in a series of unwholesome convulsive shivers, but it didn't budge.

"Hey! Hey!" floated up from the crowd.

"Oh, look and see what they're howling about now," growled Hawkins.

The cause of their vociferations was only too apparent.

Ping! Ping! Ping! One by one, sawed in two by the machine, the telegraph wires were snapping!