y, give me a chance, can't you?" interrupted Waldo, grasping the
glasses and shifting his station for one more favourable as a lookout.

He had seen sufficient to catch the right angle, and then gave a
suppressed snort as he took in the view. Half a minute thus, then a wild
cry escaped his lips, closely followed by the words:

"Now I DO see something! And it isn't a drifting tree, either! Or, that
is, something else which--shove her closer, uncle Phaeton! True as you
live, there's something caught in yonder big suck which is--closer, for
love of glory!"

"If this is another joke, Waldo--"

"No, no, I tell you, Bruno! Shove her over, uncle, for, without this
glass is hoodooed, we're needed right yonder,--and needed mighty bad,
too!"

Little need of so much urging, by the way, since Professor Featherwit
was but slightly less excited by their double discovery, and even before
the glasses were clapped to Waldo's eyes the aerostat swung around to
move at full speed towards that precise quarter of the compass.

"What is it you see, then, boy?" demanded Bruno, itching to take the
glasses, yet straining his own vision towards that as yet far-distant
spot.

"Something like--oh, see how the water is running out,--just like
emptying a bathtub through a hole at the bottom! And see what--a man
caught in the whirl, true's you're a foot high, uncle!"

"A man? Here? Impossible,--incredible, boy!" fairly exploded the
professor, not yet ready to relinquish his cherished belief in a terra
incognita.

The air-voyagers were swiftly nearing that point of interest, and now
keen-eyed Bruno caught a glimpse of a drifting object which had been
drawn within the influence of yonder whirlpool, but which was just as
certainly a derelict from the forest.

"Another floating tree-trunk for Waldo!" he cried, with a short laugh,
feeling far from unpleased that the intense strain upon his nerves
should be thus lessened. "Try it again, lad, and perhaps--"

"Try your great-grandmother's cotton nightcap! Don't you suppose I can
tell the difference between a tree and a--"

"Ranting, prancing, cavorting 'sour-us' right out of Webster's
Unabridged, eh, laddy-buck?"

"That's all right, if you can only keep on thinking that way, old man;
but if yonder isn't a fellow being in a mighty nasty pickle, then I
wouldn't even begin to say so! And--you look, uncle Phaeton, please."

Nothing loath, the professor took the proffered glasses, and but an
inst