Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/157

 on an island, and the question was how to get away from the island without a boat. Then the bird idea struck him, so he got busy making wings for himself and his son Icarus. He tacked big feathers together with thread and stuck the little ones on with wax till the whole contraption had the curve of a bird's wing. His son, Ikey, seems to have been a mischievous little monkey who kept blowing the feathers around and meddling with the wax, and I suppose that's the reason he got what was coming to him later, as happens to all the sprightly kids in the pious story books.

"Well, when the old man had finished off his two pair of wings he hoisted his up and gave 'em a wave and found he could get a lift as easy as falling off a log. Then, he proceeded to put young Ikey wise. 'Now, Ike,' says he, 'no tail-spins or nose-dives, or loop-the-loops, but just straight business, and don't you fly too low or the damp sea air will take all the curl out of those Marcelle wave feathers, and, on the other hand, don't you get to rocketing too high or the sun will melt the wax.' In those benighted days, folks thought the sun was just a couple