Vinegar Atts did not like the looks of the airship. It was the first he had ever seen, and it bore too much resemblance to a wasp, and looked very much as if it might carry a dangerous stinger in its tail. With the true orator’s instinct for dramatic effect, he looked around to find the most impressive place for him to stand. Not at the tail, because that might be dangerous; not at the sides, for wasp might flap its wings; so he moved up in front and stood looking with great interest at a wheel of paddles right in front of the machine. That did not look good to him, either, so he backed off well out of range, and announced:
“Brudders of the Nights of Darkness lodge, as fer as I knows, dar ain’t only two niggers in dis crowd dat ever seen one of dese things befo’, but dis here chariot of fire ain’t no new thing. De Prophet Elijah went up in one of ’em to heaven.”
“Bless Gawd!” a negro’s voice exclaimed reverently.
Then in his rich barytone voice, Vinegar Atts began to sing, and one by one the voices of the negroes joined in:
“I rode on de sky, Went up mighty high, Nor did envy Elijah his seat; My soul mounted higher In a chariot of fire, And the moon, it wus under my feet.”
In the melody of this song all the weird, jungle voices of the swamp were silenced. It seemed as if every bird and beast stood still to listen, and the Gulf breeze, playing over the fluted tree-tops, made a beautiful, Eolian accompaniment to the rich African voices.
Startled eyes glanced up at that moon which rode majestically through the still oceans of the sky, and the soul of every man was filled with awe at the thought of having that globe of glowing yellow under his brogan-shod feet. It was a thought to stir the Ethiopian soul to its depths, laying hold upon the rich Oriental imagination, appealing to the jungle heritage of superstition, and causing them to thrill with mingled feelings of rapture and fear.
Vinegar Atts knew the value of the oratorical pause; he waited until the sighing of the trees and the radiance of the moonbeams had touched even the most stupid mind among them. And then in a deep, solemn voice he continued:
“Way back in de Ole Testarment day whar people lived forty thousan’ years ago, de Prophet Ezekiel tell us about dis here machine. I wus readin’ it to-night, and dis is whut de Good Book says: