"Air! I'm choking!" gasped Bruno, tearing open his shirt-collar
with a spasmodic motion.

"Hold me fast!" echoed Waldo, clinging desperately to the
life-line. "It's drawing me--into the--ah!"

Even the professor gave certain symptoms of alarm for that
moment, but then the danger seemed past as the ship darted fairly
across the storm-trail, hovering to the east of that aerial
phantom.

There was no difficulty in filling their lungs now, and once more
Professor Featherwit headed the flying-machine directly for the
balloon-shaped cloud, modulating its pace so as to maintain their
relative position fairly well.

"Take note how it progresses,--by fits and starts, as it were,"
observed Featherwit, now in his glory, eyes asparkle and muscles
aquiver, hair bristling as though full of electricity, face
glowing with almost painful interest, as those shifting scenes
were for ever imprinted upon his brain.

"Sort of a hop, step, and jump, and that's a fact," agreed Waldo,
now a bit more at his ease since that awful sense of suffocation
was lacking. "I thought all cyclones--"

"Tornado, my DEAR boy!" expostulated the professor.

"I thought they all went in holy hurry, like they were sent for
and had mighty little time in which to get there. But this