Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/58

 Down came every fist on the table till the glasses bounced and rattled an accompaniment to the last stanza:

This rigmarole was rendered time and again, each time with more tremendous clatter than the time before. But even boy energy ebbs at last, and the tumult began to die away.

"It's all slightly exaggerated," said Hardy, "as Mark Twain declared when told of a report of his own death, but it expresses my feelings, and, I believe, the feelings of every flyer that ever trimmed a bird." "You bet it does," agreed the chorus.

Then the conviviality moderated into a short discussion of the joys of flying.

During all this jollity several hours had hurried by, and when the cuckoo clock announced