when they get up
two or three thousand feet," said Stubby.

CHAPTER X

UP IN A DIRIGIBLE

"Help! Oh, help! I must have some air," whined Stubby. "I am getting
seasick!" But neither Billy nor Button heard him as the noise of the
engine and propellers drowned all other sounds in the balloon.

"If there was only a deck I could get out on! I wish I had not come! I
just hate this way of traveling! It is worse than being in an elevator
in a high building and having the car shoot from the bottom floor to
the top in one bound. This thing is worse for it decides to stop,
dropping and then shooting up again without warning, and it runs
upside down and every other way but straight ahead. Oh, oh, oh! I
can't stand it another minute. I must have air!"

So Stubby crawled out from under his chair and climbed up on a long,
narrow window seat directly under an open window and hung out his
head. He could only just reach the window by standing on his hind legs
as he was so short and the window ledge was so far above the seat. As
he looked out he could see the earth fast receding from him. He felt
as if it were the dirigible that was standing still and the earth that
was dropping from them. By this time they were so high in the air
that the fields and forests looked like squares on a checkerboard and
the broad rivers were mere silver threads across it. As for the
churches and houses, they looked like card houses or toy paper
villages. People he could see none; they were too small to be seen
from this height. He became so interested looking that he forgot his
seasickness, and he was very much surprised when they ran into a
raincloud and he felt the raindrops on his face. But what surprised
him most was to see lightning darting all around him and so near it
seemed to go through the dirigible and come out the opposite side. As
for the thunder, you people who have never been up in the clouds and
heard it close at hand have no idea of the terrific noise and of the
terror it causes one.

[Illustration]

By this time the big dirigible was floundering in the stormclouds as a
ship does in a heavy sea, only ten times more so. A dirigible is
lighter than a ship and the wind at this altitude much stronger. It
would catch the balloon up and carry it for miles out of its course on
one of its fierce currents. Then without warning it would suddenly die
down and the big balloon would drop hundreds of feet only to be caught
up by another b