The air ship is the real thing. The rounder can state it as a positive fact. He has seen it and felt it and ridden in it and talked to its operators, and is now swelling with a dignity attained by no other person in North Dakota.
It was about half past nine o'clock last night and the Rounder was on a side street, having gone around the block to dodge a friend of whom he had borrowed $1.50.
Suddenly he felt himself grappled around the waist and drawn upward toward the sky. Objects on earth grew small, the lights dim and finally faded.
The Rounder closed his eyes as he passed through the clouds. Visions of a Beautiful City passed before him and his ears strained for the first blast of Gabriel's trumpet.
In a few moments he stopped ascending, and upon opening his eyes found himself in an air ship surrounded by a number of peculiar looking men -- evidently populists. Each had a little bunch of whiskers on his chin, and each whisker of a different color. The Rounder afterwards learned it was the reflection of the tallow candles on these whiskers that emitted the strange and varied colored lights that have been mystifying the people of the entire northwest for weeks. The man with the red whiskers was apparently the "head push."
The party was holding an animated conversation and were apparently greatly excited and displeased. From what the Rounder could learn they had been fishing for bull-heads in the Red river, and having accidentally changed their course slightly, the fish hooks had caught his clothes, and under the supposition they had captured a whale, he was drawn into the air ship. The proposition under discussion was the best method of getting rid of their unexpected visitor. The man with the yellow beard suggested they throw him out, and the man with the lilacs that they tie him to the screw propeller there to swing as a horrible example to the curious. The Rounder's brow began to grow moist, and cold shudders played tag up and down his spinal column.
Captain Red Whiskers, with a majestic wave of his hand, threw all suggestions aside, and said: "No, he shall kiss a cloth covered volume of "The First Battle" and swear by the beard of Billy Bryan that what he has seen shall ever remain locked in his inner innermost, beneath his chest protector." And it was done.
In conseguence the Rounder is not able to disclose the air ship's mechanism. He feels at liberty however to state he learned it originated in Kansas, and it to be used by Candidate Bryan in making his campaign tour in 1900. The speed of the ship is about ten miles a minute, and the plan is to hover over each town, while Mr. Bryan, through a speaking trumpet, orates to the multitude below. It is expected in this way that a personal appeal may be delivered to every voter in the United States.
Just as they were lowering him to terra firma Reddy remarked to the Rounder that he was considering a proposition from Johnnie Haas to use his machine as a jag wagon, and that he might accept, for the time being.