t's like what they have where she came from. She is braced against the
cabin, and is wrapped up in furs. I guess she is all right."

"I suppose we must let her have her way," remarked Amos Henderson.
"After all she may be used to it."

In anxiousness and apprehension the voyagers waited for the storm to
cease. But it showed no signs of abating. More and more violently rocked
the _Monarch_.

"We must shut off the gasolene stoves!" exclaimed the inventor after a
particularly heavy pitching and tossing motion, when the craft nearly
turned over. "If we upset, the fluid will run from the tanks, come in
contact with the flames, and we will burn in mid-air!"

Washington set to work turning off all the gasolene, and the larger
tanks were lashed fast and securely stopped up.

"Better put our furs on," suggested the inventor. "It will be very cold
in here soon."

The lack of heat quickly made itself felt, the ship becoming like an
ice-box. Old Andy was warmly covered, for he was asleep in his bunk,
having fallen into a slumber after being lashed in. The noise of the
storm did not awaken him, since he was somewhat stupid from a fever into
which his wound had thrown him.

All that could be done was to wait and hope. No human force could
prevail over the storm. Bracing themselves against whatever offered, and
clinging by their hands to projections, the adventurers in the cabin
expected every moment to be their last. Washington, who had gone out to
the engine room, came hurrying back.

"Look, here, Perfessor," he said, sticking his head in the dining cabin
door, "de gas machine hab stopped circulatin'."

"Did you shut off the power?"

"No, sah! I ain't done gone and shut off no power!"

Making his way as best he could while the ship pitched and tossed, Amos
Henderson reached the engine room. He looked at the gas generator. The
power was turned on full, but the apparatus was not working.

"That is strange," he remarked. "I wonder--"

Then he hurried forward to the conning tower. As he did so the ship was
whirled quickly around several times, and the sudden motion threw the
old man down, his head striking on the edge of one of the bunks. He lay
white and still.

"He's killed!" cried Washington.

"We are in a whirlwind!" yelled Bill at the same instant. "We'll be
sucked up to the sky!"

The airship was swinging around and around as if in the grasp of some
giant. The craft was really caught in the centre of a whirlwin