"For de goodness gracious Agnes' sake!" gasped the negro, "yo' suahly
ain't a-gwine ter dribe me ter wo'k up in disher flyin' contraption?
Dat would suah be cruelty ter animiles, boy--it. suah would!"

"We've got to eat, Wash," said Jack, chuckling, "and you are steward
and cook of this craft."

"Gollyation! did I ship fo' sech wo'k? I nebber knowed it. It does
seem to me dat de consanguinity ob de 'casion done call fo' notting
but de quietest kind o' verisimilitude. De qualmishness dat arises in
de interiorness of ma diaphragm ev'ry time I circumnavigates erbout
in disher flyin' ship makes me wanter express mahself in de mos'
scatterin' kin' ob er way--I hopes you gits ma meanin' clear?"

Jack was laughing so that he could not speak, but Mark managed to say:

"You mean that the motion of the aeroplane gives you a feeling of _mal
de mer_?"

"Dat's wot I done said," Wash replied, seriously. "I nebber in ma life
felt so mal-der-merry as I do at dis present onauspicious 'casion; an'
if dat mal don't stop merryin' purty quick, I suah shall be--ugh!--sick
ter ma stummick!"

This wail fairly convulsed Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson; but they knew
that if Wash paid more attention to his duties and thought less about
his own situation he would be better off. Mark insisted on his going
at once into the tiny, covered "galley," as the boys called it, hung
amidships, in which were the means of heating water, making coffee,