Jarvis was the first to extricate himself. He leaped to his feet and began dancing about, howling lustily.
"What kind of a game is this that you've put me up against?" he yelled.
The boy, with arms and legs wrapped around the guy wire, had shot down from the top of the stove. He was angry all through, more angry than scared or even hurt.
Rush and Pig-Iron were too busy picking themselves up from the floor where Jarvis's bump had landed them, to make reply.
"What's the matter with you fellows? Did I bowl you over? Well, it serves you right if I did."
"Bob," laughed Steve getting to his feet, "I knew nothing could do you up. You're too tough to be very badly hurt. What happened to you up there?"
"That's what I've come down here to find out. What happened down here? Was it an earthquake, or something of the sort?"
"Something like that. Mr. Peel called it a hang-over up at your end."
"Hang-over? Pshaw! It was a fall-over, so far as I was concerned."
"How'd you git on that guy-wire?" demanded Peel, breaking into the conversation at this juncture. "The head of that is more'n twenty feet from where you were working?"
"I took the air-line route," grinned Jarvis.
"I was working over the top. Something all of a sudden went wrong, and there didn't seem to be any smoke or anything coming out. I got up on the edge of the crater----"
"I mean what I said. It was a crater, and don't you forget it--a real, live crater. You'd have thought so if you had seen it spit fire and lava. Well, about the time I got up on the edge, pouf! slam, bang! The whole insides of the volcano popped up in my face. I must have fallen over in, for the eruption lifted me right out again. I did another aviation act. I spread my planes and sailed through the air----"
"Was that--no, of course not. Where were you all the time from the explosion to just now, when you came down on the wire?"
"I was roosting on that flange up there near the top of the stove."
"What? Thrown way over there?" exclaimed Steve.
"No; didn't I tell you I flew again? I'm getting to be an expert. First I flew over in the open-hearth building and landed on a girder. This time I tried a more ambitious flight, landing on a hot stove. All the stuff from the eruption fell down on me and woke me up after a little. I nearly fell off trying to reach the guy-wire that I knew was there. You know the rest. I took a slide down the wire that would have made a Japanese performer turn pale. Then you and I had a collision."