Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/156

 winged horse Pegasus had a steady job furnishing air rides to bucks who knew how to handle him, But a fellow named Bellerophon tried to get up to Olympus, the Greek heaven, on him; whereupon Jupiter sent a gadfly to pester the beast till he gave the ambitious rider a tumble. Used to be a ship in the English navy, by the way, called The Bellerophon, which the sailorboys proceeded to twist into The Bully Ruffian.

"Then, there was the god Mercury, who used to plane through the atmosphere with winged sandals and a feathered cap, carrying aerograms for his daddy, Jupiter. When he was off duty one day he invented the lyre—not the kind you are thinking of, but the l-y-r-e—the ancestor of the jews'-harp that we boys call the juice-harp."

"That's where quicksilver gets its name 'mercury,' after him, isn't it?" asked Jimmy.

"That's right, Solomon. Now we'll get down to the first account of a man trying to fly, in the Greek fables. It seems a chap named Daedalus broke out of a tower in which he'd been jugged by King Minos, but the tower was