The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1910-02-24
CHAPTER Nv
The Fan That Followed Pride.

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Theodore fell like a stone, so
swiftly that the aeronat seemed to
dart incontinently toward heaven.
All about him were the tossing
folds of the cloud, streaming
horsetails of fog, fleeces of aerial
wool, invisible, save for the lights
OF the Roc. which Internationally
revealed the vaporous details and
partly dispelled the weird illusion
that he was falling eternally, like
"a soul hurled forth into a purga-
tory of limitless descent. Like
the retinal image of a quenched
flame, he saw in the murk the
eyes of Shayne's niece, and her
white face under the quaint point
ed hat, blankly amazed at his des-
perate leap from the air-ship.
Suddenly the pull of the parachute
admonished him that at last it
was doing its work, and restored
to him an acute perception of his
situation.
He felt none of the effects of
the gale; but the wind of his fall
burst upward as from the mouth
of some huge blower, fighting his
descent. stripping off his hat, and
swapping his hair like whip-lashes.
Black as the heavens was all be-
low until directly beneath him
there suddenly burst forth a great
red light that kindled the cloud
to crimson, turning the heavens
to sky of sanguinary vapor SPAN
ming sea of flame. The mysteri-
GUS light swelled like an outburst-
ing conflagration; filled the fall
ing boy with terror; and then, as
swiftly as it had grown, it waned,
faded, and the sky was dark again.
The fear of the eery and inexplica-
bic chilled him more than did the
fierce March blast. The expanded
parachute suspended him over
fiery mystery and an unknown
Hand, wondering, wishing for day,
or for clear darkness even, that
he might see on what or into what
he was falling.
If he but knew the land, he
might set the deflectors and work
his fall over into safety-if safety
the neighborhood afforded. How
the winds voice grew! Whether
on church spire or chimney or
tower, into garden or wood or
graveyard or into open grave, it
was a wild. dangerous night in
which to land.
Suddenly he burst from the
floor of the cloud like a meteor
lite, and saw long procession of
white and violet lights speeding
past and away into the distance,
the arc-lights of a town set into
apparent flight by the speed of
his headlong career before the
wind. Far off In the glare of a
locomotive fire-box he could see a
|devilish black fireman, weirdly
stocking. Had there been light
for it, Carson had scant time to
survey his land-fall; but he judged
instantaneously that on either side
would likely be open fields; and to
avoid the roofs and chimneys, he
set the deflectors to nurse off his
descent toward farms and soft
earth.
The town fled away; the roar
of the wind rose about him; he
was whipped stingingly by the
branches of a tall tree; then a
Hover one bowed him through its
dense top: he laid hold Of a slim
birch, and, as it bent like fish
|ing-rod under his weight, he let
go the sheets of his parachute,
the wind spilled from the silken
leach, and he tumbled heavily in
Ito a mattress-llke bridal-wreath
bush, over an asphalted walk.
and, eased down by the shrubbery,
he rose unhurt, so far as he could
feel, to find himself by a rustic
lseat near a dry fountain. On his
left he could make out long
building three or four stories
high, the roof of which he had
barely missed, looming against
the night sky, black, solid, dark
like the FOOLS heart" and to his
eyes, immitigably sinister.
A high wall running back from
each end of this structure, seem
ed to him to bound the garden
for a garden he guessed it to be.
Back in some crepuscular jungle
lhe heard the throaty below of a
great dog, and thanked Heaven
THAT he had left no trail. He
found his parachute almost unin-
jured, whipped it about with the
Hastings. and siung it on his back.
1.-The dogs felonious bark seemed
fengrier now, and. he fancied,
nearer. Feeling for his pistol and
finding 1t lost, ne limped-for he
Inow discovered that one knee was
the lawn to the place
lfarthest from the dog.
Following the wall, he found 1t
Integral with that of the house.
For two or three hundred feet
back, 1t was blank and high and
The dog was
Istill now. and.l though Theod pres
legs prickled with the fear of
Ifangs at each rustic In the shrub
lbery, he reconnoitered the rear
wall to a brick barn into which 1t
was built. Everything was de-
lpressingly secure and substantial
land worimanliire. Like the walls
that surround the terrestrial par
ladise, these structures were as
1.-THE native rock Of the eternal hills.