Rocky Mountain Sam — page 208: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~ ROCKY MOUNTAIN SAM. | 199 tion. ‘‘Ar’n’t she a brick?” And with that, for the first time, he folded Mewanee in his mighty arms and adminis- tered upon her lips a sounding kiss. ‘“Mewanee has indeed proved herself not only faithful to the core, but a most valuable ally,” said the professor. ‘It now remains to be seen whether she can direct us to the spot directly over the village. Teddy, my man cast off the anchor.” | This was accordingly done, and in a few moments the airship was softly floating over the forest, the car almost brushing the pointed tops of the firs. Mewanee looked over the side hesitatingly, but at length assigned a spot as being the right one or very nearly so, and the balloon was accordingly anchored there. It was decided that Big Horn should make the descent, as being the one whose great strength would enable him most successfully to force and cut his way through the green floor of boughs and foliage. His preparations were very simple, and very soon com- plete. | Masking his face with a stout strip of cloth to protect it from the sharp-pointed fir boughs, with apertures for his eyes tolook through, and filling his belt with his stoutest:. hunting-knives—the use of a hatchet being impracticable on account of the noise—he tied astrong line connected with the car, about his waist, provided himself with anothor . line with which to communicate with the ground when he should have made his way to the lower limbs, and then let himself cautiously over the side of the car. Making a slight misstep at the start, he suddenly disap- peared with a plunge under the sea of foliage, but pres- ently they heard him stirring,just below the surface, and knew that he was among the hard boughs cutting his way © down foot by foot... He soon found that the task he had laid out for himself was not so difficult as the foliage of the tree-tops had suggested, inasmuch as the boughs grew less closely together. Still he had work enough to do in cutting his way down. But the knife in his strong hand lopped off branch after branch as though they had been willow twigs, and he made the descent foot byfoot. One of the principal inconveniences he had to deal with was the wild- cats which peopled the grove in prodigious numbers; but after stabbing several of them the others kept a little shy, (ele) GComicbooks