Conversation lagged after that. For my part, I was too dazed and too firmly enmeshed in the cords to say much.
I fancy that the same applied to Hawkins, but he happened to be facing ahead, and now and then he called back bulletins of our progress.
"Getting nearer the island," he announced after some ten minutes of the agony.
A little later: "Thank Heaven! We"re almost over land!"
And still later, when I had been choked and twisted almost into insensibility by the eccentric dives of the affair and the consequent tightening of the cords, he revived me with:
"By George, Griggs, we"re sinking toward land!"
I managed to look downward. Hawkins had told the truth. The wind was indeed going down, and with it the remains of the Anti-Fire-Fly.
Beneath appeared a big factory, its chimney belching forth black smoke in disregard of the Sabbath, and we seemed likely to land within its precincts.
"I knew it! I knew it!" Hawkins cried joyfully. "We"re safe, after all, just as I said. We"ll drop just outside the fence."
"Thank the Lord," I murmured.
"No! No! We"ll drop right on that heap of dirt!" predicted Hawkins excitedly. "Yes, sir, that"s where we"ll drop. D"ye see that fellow wheeling a wheelbarrow toward the pile? Hey!"
The man glanced up in amazement.
"Farther down every minute!" pursued Hawkins. "I knew we"d be all right!
Maybe the Anti-Fire-Fly isn"t such a bad thing after all, eh?"
"Maybe not," I sighed. "But I"ll take the red-hot ladder."
"Go ahead and take it," chattered the inventor. "We"re not thirty feet from the ground and steering straight for that dirt-pile. Yes, sir, the wind"s gone down completely. Hooray!"
"Hey, youse!" shouted the man with the wheelbarrow, somewhat excitedly.
"Well?" bawled Hawkins.
"Steer away from it!" continued the workman, waving his arms at the pile.
"We can"t steer," replied Hawkins cheerfully. "But it"s all right."
"The poile! The poile! Sure, we"ve just drew the foire, an" thim"s the hot coals! Be careful o" the cinder poile!"
"What did he say?" asked Hawkins superciliously.
""Be careful of the cinder pile," I think."
"Oh, we won"t hurt your old cinder pile!" called the inventor jocosely, as the wreck of the Anti-Fire-Fly swooped down with a rush.
"But the cinders!" howled the man. "Bedad! They"re into it! Mike! Mike!
Bring the hose! The hose!"
And we _were_ into it.
A final rush of air and we struck the pile with a thud. And for my part, I had no sooner landed than I bounced to my feet with a shriek, for that cinder pile was about the hottest proposition it has ever been my misfortune to meet.
The cords were all about me, and as I pulled wildly in one direction, I could feel Hawkins pulling as wildly in the opposite.
"Let go! Let go, Griggs!" he screamed. "Come my way! Lord! I"m all afire! Come, quick!"
"I"m not going to climb back over that infernal heap!" I shouted. "You come this way!"
"But my feet! They"re burning, and----"
A mighty stream of water knocked me headlong to the ground. Sizzling, steaming on the red-hot cinders, it caught Hawkins and hurled his panting person to the other side, Anti-Fire-Fly and all. Mike had arrived with the hose.
After a period of wallowing in water and mud I regained my feet.
Hawkins was already standing a little distance away, torn, scorched, drenched, black with cinders and staring wild-eyed about him.
"Why--why--Griggs," he mumbled, "what--did--we----"
"Oh, we flew away from fire with the Anti-Fire-Fly!" I said.
Such was the end of the Anti-Fire-Fly.
Attired in such of our own raiment as had survived the cinder pile and the hose, and in other bits of clothing contributed by kindly factory workmen, we took the next boat for New York, and a cab thereafter.
We reached home in time to see the ladies mounting the Hawkins" steps, presumably to investigate the reason for our prolonged inspection.
For a few moments they seemed quite incapable of speech. Mrs. Hawkins was the first to regain the use of her tongue.
"Herbert," she said in an ominously calm tone, "what was it this time?"
Hawkins smiled foolishly.
"It was the Hawkins Anti-Fire-Fly," I said spitefully. "Fly away from fire with the Anti-Fire-Fly, you know. Tell your wife about it, Hawkins."
Then Mrs. Hawkins addressed her husband and said--but let that pa.s.s.
We have all the essential facts of the case as it is. Moreover, a successful author told me last week that unhappy endings are in the worst possible taste just now.
CHAPTER VIII.
Hawkins and his wife had been just one month in their new house.
My memory on that point is particularly clear, for the Executive Committee of the Ladies" Missionary Society met at Hawkins" home the very day they moved in officially; and it had been hanging over me, more or less, that the next a.s.sembly of that body was to be held at my own residence.