last and twirled around or carried up again as the case
might be, while constantly the lightning flashed and the thunder
rolled and our Chums thought the very next gale would double them up
and dash them to their death.

While Stubby was at the window, Billy was having his own troubles. He
had tried to find a better place to hide than under the table and had
come out to do so when an extra hard lurch of the balloon had sent him
headlong the entire length of the dining saloon. He hit his head
against the partition at one end of the room and then was flung back
to the other end again. As the balloon was changing its course every
minute, he could not regain his bearings. One minute the balloon would
be standing almost perpendicularly, climbing to higher altitudes to
try to get above the stormclouds. The next a heavy gust of wind would
drive it back, or the gale would die down altogether and the dirigible
would drop into a pocket of the atmosphere, or, worse yet, would be
twirled around and around like a ship in a whirlpool of water.

Poor Billy went slipping head foremost from one end of the saloon to
the other, sometimes sitting on his tail, at others rolling over and
over until he felt like a jellyfish. But still the storm continued,
and he could not find a place of safety.

As for Button, he had the best of it for when the balloon rolled or
dove, he simply dug his claws further into the curtain pole and hung
on for dear life. Once the dirigible sailed for hundreds of feet
upside down. Button simply dug in deeper and hung upside down too.

The jerking of the dirigible knocked Stubby off the window seat and
for many minutes he had been rolling from one end of the saloon to the
other on one side of the table while Billy took the same journeys on
the other side of the table, only it was not hurting Stubby so much as
it was Billy. He had curled himself into a tight ball which made him
roll easily. He looked like a ball of scraggly worsted. As for Billy,
try as he would he could not curl up in a tight ball as his legs were
too long and his horns much too sharp.

"Oh, my, will this storm ever be over? Why did we ever let our
curiosity get the better of us and entice us to try a ride in this
dangerous thing? No more dirigibles for me if I live to get out of
this one, which I am very much afraid I won't!"

In less than five minutes from the time Billy thus spoke the
dirigible had weathered the storm and was flying in clear