And
then the speed began to slacken.
Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the unearthly
hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its
clamour.
"Got it!" shrilled the voice. "Got it! Don't worry!"
The wind died down to the roar, passed back into the whistling shriek
and diminished to a steady whisper. In the comparative quiet O'Keefe's
tones now came in normal volume.
"Some little shoot-the-chutes, what?" he shouted. "Say--if they had
this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace! Press all the way in these
holes and she goes top-high. Diminish pressure--diminish speed. The
curve of this--dashboard--here sends the wind shooting up over our
heads--like a windshield. What's behind you?"
I flashed the light back. The mechanism on which we were ended in
another wall exactly similar to that over which O'Keefe crouched.
"Well, we can't fall out, anyway," he laughed. "Wish to hell I knew
where the brakes were! Look out!"
We dropped dizzily down an abrupt, seemingly endless slope; fell--fell
as into an abyss--then shot abruptly out of the blackness into a
throbbing green radiance.
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