It caught in one of the windows in the steeple.
Every moment the gale was slamming the boat against the spire, threatening to demolish the Ranger.
If that happened she was apt to fall to the ground and kill her crew, and Frank realized it.
“We will have to abandon her!” he cried at last.
“Not till the gyroscope lever is repaired. It would occupy an hour or two to do that. In the meantime we may get killed.”
“What shall we be afther doin, sor?” questioned Barney.
“Slide down the anchor rope to the steeple.”
They thought they could get the air ship when the storm blew over, so Barney and Pomp tied their fiddle and banjo to their backs and all hands hastened out on deck.
Grasping the grapnel rope they slid down one after another to the steeple and safely reached a platform there.
Scarcely was this done when the wind caused the Ranger to give a sudden plunge, and the grapnel tore itself free.
The next moment the flying air ship shot up in the air and disappeared in the dark storm cloud.
A week afterward, when her batteries gave out, she fell into the ocean thousands of miles away and was swallowed up.
Our friends were sorry enough to lose her, but glad to save their lives, and finally descended the interior stairs of the spire and reached the ground in safety.
They returned to Frank’s house, where they were warmly greeted by the inventor’s family.
On the following day Frank went with Vaneyke to the police station, so the doctor could surrender himself.
Here, to their joy, they found that the real murderer had been exposed, and was then in prison awaiting trial.
He was the man who had accused the doctor of the crime, two men going to the scene of the crime had witnessed his villainy.
That cleared Dr. Vaneyke, and the detective who had made such a desperate effort to capture him was very profuse in his apologies for what he had done to annoy him.
The professor then left Readestown and went to Washington to attend to the articulation of the mammoth’s skeleton.
As for Frank and Barney and Pomp, they were very much chagrined over the loss of the Ranger, but finally forgot all about her when the inventor announced his intention to build a new contrivance with which they might make a journey.