nderstand and appreciate
these little sideshow comedies of Grandpa's. And when it would become
noised about among them that this particular monkey had traveled all
the way from South America through the air with the "bird-men," their
awe for him was amusing to behold.

CHAPTER XXV

ENGULFED IN A VOLCANO'S DUST

With three hundred gallons of gasoline in her tanks, and her broken
tail-elevator well repaired, the Sky-Bird was ready at eleven o'clock
that evening to take off. Her crew were all tired out, but they knew
they would soon be able to occupy the comfortable seats or hammocks in
the cabin for another long stretch of over-sea travel, for it would be
morning before they would reach Port Darwin, Australia, their next stop.

It had been raining very hard in Singapore just before they arrived,
and the field was quite wet, with many puddles in the low spots.
Through one or two of these they had had to run in landing, and it
seemed that in hopping off they would be forced to do so again.
Fortunately the ground was sandy, so they had come to a stop in a spot
not at all muddy, and had thus been able to work upon the machine
without the discomforts of wading in slime while doing it.

They now started the engine, Tom climbed in, and they were off, running
over the soft ground at increasing speed. Then the airplane struck a
pool of water, five or six inches deep, which almost pulled them up.
It also held them back so that when the machine emerged it was going
very little faster than at the beginning. The next patch of ground was
a little longer, but they had not risen when they struck it at a rate
of about twenty-five miles an hour.

This pool was also quite deep, and the sudden resistance almost threw
the Sky-Bird onto her nose. It did cause her to dip so that her long
propeller struck the puddle, and immediately water and sand were sucked
up and thrown in almost every direction by the swiftly revolving
blades. Much of it reached the natives, who in two long rows of
curious humanity, formed a lane for the passage of the craft, and many
a poor fellow gave a howl and fell back against those behind,
spluttering and rubbing grit and water from his face, while rivulets
coursed down his dusky body amid the howls of laughter of his mates.

The flyers had only a fleeting glimpse of this amusing incident before
they found the front windows of the cabin so covered with the deluge of
spray that they could scarcely se