."

This was too much for Rebecca's credulity, and Droop could not induce
her to talk into the trumpet.

"You can't make a fool o' me, Copernicus Droop," she exclaimed.

"You try, Cousin Phoebe," he said at last.

Phoebe looked dubiously at her sister as though half of opinion that
her shrewd example should be followed.

"You sure it'll do it?" she asked.

"Certain!" cried Copernicus, nodding his head with violence.

She stood a moment leaning over with her pretty lips close to the
trumpet.

Then she straightened up with a face of comical despair.

"I don't know what to say," she exclaimed.

Droop stopped the motor and looked about the room. Suddenly his eyes
brightened.

"There," he cried, pointing to the book Phoebe had been reading, "read
suthin' out o' that into it."

Phoebe opened the book at random, and as Droop started the motor again
she read the following lines slowly and distinctly into the trumpet:

"It is thus made clear from the indubitable evidence of the plays
themselves that Francis Bacon wrote the immortal works falsely ascribed
to William Shakespeare, and that the gigantic genius of this man was the
result of the possession of royal blood. In this unacknowledged son of
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, was made manifest to all countries
and for all centuries the glorious powers inherent in the regal blood of
England."

"That'll do," said Droop. "Now jest hear it talk back."

He substituted the repeating stylus for the recording point and set the
motor in motion once more. To the complete stupefaction of Rebecca, the
repetition of Phoebe's words was perfect.

"Why! It's Phoebe's voice," she began, but Phoebe broke in upon her
suddenly.

"Why, see the hills on each side of us, Mr. Droop," she cried.

Droop glanced out and leaped a foot from the ground.

"Goramighty!" he screamed, "she'll strike!" He dashed to the engine-room
and threw up the forward edges of the aeroplanes. Instantly the vessel
swooped upward and the hills Phoebe had seen appeared to drop into
some great abyss.

The two women ran to a window and saw that they were over a bleak and
rocky island covered with ice and snow.

Droop came to their side, quite pale with fright.

"Great Moses!" he exclaimed. "I warn't more'n jest in time, I tell ye!
We was a-settlin' fast. A little more'n we'd ha' struck--" He snapped
the fingers of both hands and made a gesture expressive of the complete
destruction which would have