"Oh! it's too late to stop him, Rob!"
"Yes, I see it is," replied the scout leader, and somehow there was not much of excitement about either his voice or his manner, only an apparent inane desire to grin, Hiram thought as he looked at his chum.
"There, he's actually grabbed hold of the fat boy, and is trying to lift him up so as to get him out of the window."
"You're a little off there, Hiram. Seems to me I would say Andy was trying to hug the poor fat boy, because he's certainly thrown his arms around him, and acts as if he might be glad to meet him!"
"Why, Rob, whatever can that mean! He is acting just as you say, and it seems to me Andy isn't doing all the hugging, either."
At that Rob broke into a hearty laugh.
"You know what it stands for, and you won't tell me a thing, which I think is a mean job," complained Hiram.
"Look again," Rob told him. "Now the fat boy happens to have his face turned this way. Don't you think you've seen that same moon phiz before, Hiram? Doesn't it somehow take you back to dear old Hampton, and the many jolly times we've had on our camping trips? Say, you ought to know that boy, Hiram."
As soon as he could catch his breath, Hiram gave a shout.
"Why, consarn my picture if it isn't our chum, Tubby Hopkins!"
CHAPTER XIV.
FOUR SCOUTS IN THE WHIRL.
"Come on, let's join them," suggested Rob, as he led the way over to where Andy Bowles and the stout youth had started to shaking hands as though they never meant to stop, chattering away like a pair of magpies, and utterly unmindful of the fact that others aboard the car were shrieking aloud with growing fear.
But as it happened just then, whatever may have been the cause for the sudden stoppage of the car suspended in midair, the trouble seemed to have been rectified; for even as Rob led Hiram over to the other pair of Hampton boys, the upward passage was resumed as smoothly as though nothing had occurred.
"Well, well! if this isn't the biggest surprise ever!" Tubby exclaimed as he seized upon a hand of each of the two newcomers, and then looked around just as if he had begun to believe the whole of Hampton Troop of Boy Scouts must have come on to take in the sights of the big show.
"Only three of us, Tubby," Rob told him. "We consider ourselves the luckiest scouts in the whole U. S. A. to get a chance to make this side of the slope. Of course we knew you were out here somewhere, but you might as well hunt for a needle in a haystack as to think to find anyone in this mob."
"But tell me, won't you, please, how did you make it?" asked Tubby, whose round, rosy face seemed redder than ever under all this excitement.
"Wait till we get down out of this high box," said Hiram. "We came up here on purpose to get the grand view, you know. Besides, there are too many ears around for _my_ private business to be talked over."
"Whew!" said Tubby, surveying the speaker with more respect than he had ever before felt toward Hiram, whose many attempts to invent wonderful things had never been taken seriously by his companions.
"But Hiram is right," said Rob. "We'll only be up here a short while, so let's use our eyes the best we can. It's well worth coming a long way just to get such a panoramic view of the City, Bay and Fair."
"Panoramic-whew!" whistled Andy; "but I guess that covers the ground as well as any word you could scare up, Rob; for it is a panorama a whole lot better'n any I ever saw painted on canvas, like the Battle of Gettysburg and such."
They remained at their several posts drinking in the wonderful features of the magnificent view until finally the machinery was set in motion again, and they found themselves being gradually lowered toward the ground. The buildings lost their squatty appearance, the moving throngs of human beings ceased resembling crawling flies, and finally the four boys issued from the cage satisfied that they had experienced a sensation worth while.
"Now, let's sit down here in the shade for a little while, where we can talk," suggested Tubby Hopkins, who had been one of the scouts with Rob over in Belgium and France on the previous late summer and fall when the war was going on, and consequently could be looked on as having passed through some lively experiences.
"Just a little while," agreed Andy; and Hiram, after looking longingly away, no doubt in the direction of the quarter given up wholly to recent remarkable inventions, seemed to resign himself to martyrdom for a spell, for he, too, found a seat close by.
"Now tell it all to me," demanded Tubby, "because I'm just sure it must be a story worth hearing. What happened to bring you three fellows out here? Did some one die and leave you his fortune? It takes a pretty hefty wad of money to pay all the expenses of a jaunt across the continent."
"A poor guess that time, Tubby," said Rob. "We'll have pity on you, and give you the details before you lose weight trying to hit on the true explanation. To begin with, Hiram won the trip his own way, while Andy and myself just happened by a stroke of good luck to run upon our chance."
"Tell that to the marines, will you, please?" scoffed Tubby. "Things don't just happen to you that way, Mr. Assistant Scoutmaster Blake. Every time I've known you to get a thing you earned it by the sweat of your brow. I'd rather believe it was the other way, and that Hiram had dropped on a piece of good luck."
"Well, mebbe I did, Tubby; but then I showed perseverance and grit such as a true scout should allers possess, they say; and so I claim I earned my right to be out here at the Exposition. Go on and tell him the hull story, Rob."
Seeing that he was expected to undertake the job of being spokesman for the entire party, Rob started in. He was not the one to embellish facts, or try to make things seems of more importance than they really were.
Indeed, if anything, Rob was apt to go to the other extreme, especially if he figured at all in a leading role in the narrative.
In this way Tubby was finally put in possession of all the needful information connected with their coming. He heard about the smart way in which Hiram had conducted his negotiations by mail with the company that made a specialty of aviation goods, and which apparently had so much faith in his patent stabilizer that they had advanced sufficient funds to enable the inventor to come out and visit them at their headquarters in San Francisco.
Then followed the account of how Rob and Andy had been of such signal service to Captain Jerry and his famous scientific passenger at the time the old naphtha launch took fire while crossing the bay to Collins'
Point; together with what resulted from that rescue.
It was all very interesting to Tubby, who asked many questions when he thought Rob was holding back certain facts that had a direct bearing on the narrative.
"You see, my uncle has gone up to Portland for a week or more on business," Tubby told them. "He left me to enjoy myself at the Exposition as I pleased. I'm not going around in my scout clothes, but I've got the khaki suit at the hotel; and now that I've met you fellows, of course, I mean to wear it right along, even if I astonish the natives."
"Oh, boys wearing khaki are such a common sight these days!" Rob told him in a consoling way, "that you'd not be apt to attract any person's attention, even if you are stouter than any other scout going."
"Yes, I've met quite a few of the boys and chatted with them, too,"
admitted Tubby. "You see, I always make it a point to wear my badges under my coat even if I am in mufti-is that what they call it, Rob, when a military officer dresses in civilian garb? Yes, the scouts are everywhere, and it doesn't surprise you one bit when you see a couple of them taking part in a camel race, as I did."
Having finished their explanations, and urged on by the impatient Andy, the little party began to make the rounds of the amusement zone. It was laid out on such an extensive scale that one could hardly expect to do it justice in one afternoon; indeed, Andy announced that he anticipated putting in a full week there, taking in the sights, and feasting his eyes on the wonders that had been collected from the four corners of the earth for this special occasion.
"Here's where we can see in miniature what some of us have actually looked on before when building-the working of the great Panama Canal,"
announced Tubby, as they arrived at the panorama section. "Shall we pay and take chairs on the moving platform for a trip around?"
Of course there was not a dissenting voice, for they were boys, and had plenty of spare change and wanted to see all the sights, at least once.
After that nothing would do for Andy but that they must embark on the train for a trip through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, which was well executed with regard to color effects so as to excite their ardent admiration.
"I was sorely tempted to take that side trip on the way here," Rob confessed. "We could have done it easily enough, but you see I didn't know what to do with that priceless stuff we had charge of for Professor McEwen. I couldn't carry it on mule back, and didn't dare leave it behind at the hotel. Besides, we promised him we wouldn't linger on the way going, but do all our sight-seeing coming back."
"I'm going to fix it with uncle," asserted Tubby eagerly, "so that I can hold on with you fellows if he has to return sooner, or by another route.
I believe I'd enjoy seeing the Selkirks up in Canada first-rate, 'cause I've heard a lot about that wonderful scenery."
"We'll be glad to have you along, Tubby," said Andy.
"That goes without saying," added Hiram; while Rob smiled, and nodded in a way that Tubby knew meant "those are my sentiments, too, every time."
The next thing on the program was seeing Yellowstone Park, another scenic trip so realistic that Andy declared he would always have trouble convincing himself he had not actually been through the National Reservation where the hot springs and geysers flowed, some of the latter rising a hundred and fifty feet into the air, with steam and vapor forming a dense canopy around.
It was just after they had come out from this that the absence of Hiram was discovered. Tubby professed to be somewhat alarmed, and feared their old chum might have fallen from the observation car; but Rob set his mind straight when he admitted that he had seen Hiram sneaking away.
"He'd reached his limit of endurance," he told Andy when the latter expressed his opinion of one who cared so little for amusement; "and we've got to remember that our chum is a queer fish at best. Besides, his heart is wrapped up in things along a certain line. Let him go his way; and later on, perhaps, when some of us have grown a little tired of all this clatter in the Zone, we'll hunt up the aviation field and see what Hiram is doing."