The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 118: what you’re looking at

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

108 THE girl with the black curly head of a boy and the dark, serious eyes of a dreamer. Exquisite is the adjective I should choose in describing her. Not tall enough to be called beautiful nor small enough to be described as dain- ty, her features, limbs, fingers, were ex- quisite in their perfect proportion. » Her carriage, the serenity of her expression as she looked out over that sea of faces, told of blood and breeding. There was nothing ‘of pido} in them, nothing of fear. She stood alone in the car or basket attached to the balloon, the ° creat folds of the latter undulating sinu- ously above her as it took the gas. Her father (1 afterward learned it was he) was superintending the filling of the ereat gas-bag, adjusting the net ropes to the gathering-ring as it slowly filled. He, too, appeared to be superior to his pres- ent occupation. He was a short, slender man, with the forehead and stooped shoulders of the stu- dent and the weary eyes of one who had failed in his chief aim in life. And then I saw Brute Flanagan. He stood on the. opposite side of the car from me, at the girl’s back. His great size dwarfed her by comparison to the dimensions of a child. His arms were folded across his chest, - which made his shoulders seem even wider than they were. His low forehead and prognathous jaw, his small, shrewd eyes, with the lids half down over them, and full, coarse lips gave him the mark of the beast. “ Brute ” I named him then, and events showed that I was not far from right. I watched him curiously, as much fas- cinated by his exactness to type as by the girl’s originality. It seemed to me that his eyes never left her. He watched her as a cat watches a bird, and in spite of the abstractness of my observations, some- thing burned hot in me at the sight of it. It seemed a profanation. And now let me try to describe as best I can what happened in that next minute. The bag had filled? The aeronaut had grove of maples. ARGOSY. made fast all of his net-ropes to the gathering-ring which formed the rim of the car, and affixed in place the bags of sand ballast. He stood, a dozen feet away in the crowd, conferring with a man I judged to be his manager. The balloon was held in place by four attendants, whose weight was sufficient to anchor it. There came, first, a far-away shout of alarm that gathered volume and disturb- ing significance. I looked in the direc- tion of it, as did the crowd. My eyes rested on the tops of a near-by They were bending and writhing in mute agony. The air above them was filled with flying débris. A grayish, foglike bank of cloud stretched to the zenith in awful menace. I knew what it was. I had been in one before, and the terror of it had never left me—a, tornado. A hoarse cry went up from the crowd, and it broke in all directions. I turned back to the balloon. The girl still stood where I had last seen her, as though petri- fied, powerless to move in the face of the approaching disaster. “Jump!” I cried as I sprang toward her. If she heard, above the roar of the ap- proaching cyclone and the shouts of the mob, she gave no sign of it. Even in that moment of suspense, I noted the man, . Brute Flanagan, beyond her. His senses had apprised him of the chaos of the elements, but had not tele- graphed the news to his small brain. He stood with open mouth, staring stupidly in the direction of its approach. Beyond, and to the left of him, I was aware of an eddy in that fleeing mob, and out of it broke the girl’s father, in his face an agony of fear. But he was too late. As I reached the side of the car, the men who held it let go with shouts of fear. The great bag leaned to the blast and leaped away. Des- perately I grasped the rim of the car in an insane thought to hold it. I was jerked from my feet as with the grasp of a Titan. COMIC LMOOKS (C@