that life-giving cylinder of compressed air.

Presently, the heart-broken professor rallied, as was his nature,
and, with a visible effort putting his great loss behind him,
endeavoured to cheer up his comrades in peril.

"So far we have passed through all danger without receiving
material injury,--to ourselves, I mean,--and surely it is not too
much to hope for eventual escape?" he said, earnestly, pressing
the hands of his nephews, by way of additional encouragement.

"Yes," hesitated Bruno, with an involuntary shiver, as he glanced
around them upon those furiously boiling clouds, then cast an eye
upward, towards yonder clear sky. "Yes, but--in what manner?"

"What'll we do when the cyclone goes bu'st?" cut in Waldo, with
disagreeable bluntness. "It can't go on for ever, and when it
splits up,--where will we be then?"

"I wish it lay within my power to give you full assurance on all
points, my dear boys," the professor made reply. "I only wish I
could ensure your perfect safety by giving my own poor remnant of
life--"

"No, no, uncle Phaeton!" cried the brothers, in a single breath.

"How cheerfully, if I only might!" insisted the professor, his
homely face wearing an expression of blended regret and unbounded
affection. "But for me you would never have encountered these
perils, nor ever--"