as the professor. Andy Sudds refused to lie down again, although Jack
and Mark continued to operate the flying machine. The old hunter sat
with a rifle in his hand for the rest of the night. But the professor
went to bed.

An hour after midnight a cloud from the west completely masked the
moon and the whole heavens became misty. This cloud brought both wind
and rain, and low upon its edge the lightning played fitfully.

"There will be a heavy tempest about dawn," Andy promised the boys.
"I have seen a thunderstorm gather like this before." "But not while
you were in a flying machine," chuckled Jack.

"No, sir. But on a mountain top a tempest looks much the same."

Mark, while at the controls, had scaled the machine down the air-ways
until they were not more than fifteen hundred feet from the earth. But
the boys decided to let the storm gather beneath them, and so shot the
_Snowbird_ up again until the indicator registered three thousand feet.

Near the earth it must have been very warm and sultry; but up here it
was down to freezing, and the party were all warmly dressed. The clouds
soon hid the whole earth from them and the great flying machine traveled
in space, with the star-lit heavens above and the rolling mass of
vapor, streaked now and then with lightning flashes, beneath.

The deafening roll of the thunder awoke Washington White from a short
nap, and the darkey was not at all sure that he was safe from the
lightning bolts.