"Precisely; the aerostat rests upon an air-cushion amply solid
enough to sustain far more than our combined weight. But what is
the generally accepted view, my dear boys?"

"You tell, for we don't know how," frankly acknowledged Waldo.

"Thanks. Yet you are now far wiser than all of the scientists
who have written and published whole libraries concerning these
storm formations, but whose fallacies we are now fully prepared
to explode, once for all, through knowledge won by personal
investigation--ahem!"

Strange though it may appear, the professor forgot the mutual
danger by which they were surrounded, and trotted off on his
hobby-horse in blissful pride, paying no attention to the hideous
uproar going on, only raising his voice higher to make it heard
by his youthful auditors.

"The common belief is that, while these tornadoes are hollow,
even through the trunk or tongue down to its contact with the
earth, that hollow is caused by a constant suction, through which
a steady stream of debris is flowing, to be sown broadcast for
miles around after emerging from the open top of the so-called
balloon."

"But it isn't at all like that," eagerly cried Waldo, pointing to
where the fragments were flowing upward through those walls
themselves, yet far enough from that hollow interior to be but
indistinctly seen save on rare occasions. "Look at 'em scoot,