[Illustration: “THERE WAS A RESOUNDING CRASH!”]
All at once there flew in all directions packages of candy, popcorn and boxes of other confections. One pail of pink lemonade was tossed high into the air, and, turning over, poured out a crimson flood, which sprinkled the bystanders. Bottles of root-beer and ginger ale mingled with sarsparilla in forming a shower of cooling drinks. There was a hail of peanuts.
The big tin wings, hampered in their movements by the wreck of the stand, came to a stop. But the motor went on. It was now running at full speed, free, and its momentum was terrific. There came several explosions, louder than any that had preceded.
“Look out! She’s going to blow up! The gasolene tank will explode!” cried the fat man.
The crowd, which had gathered about the wreck, scattered on the run.
But there followed only a whistle, a wheeze, and a sort of apologetic cough from the motor. Then, with a gentle sigh, the overworked machine “went dead” and stopped. But oh what a scene of wreck, ruin and desolation!
Following the noise of the swiftly-running motor, the shouts of the crowd and the crash as the lemonade stand was demolished, there came a period of silence. No one seemed to know what to do or say.
Jerry and his chums watched Noddy pick himself up from a pile of soft dirt, where he had leaped just before his tin fly crashed into the stand. The bully was a sorry-looking sight, his clothes being thickly encrusted with soil, and his hands and face grimy. He staggered forward and gazed at the wreck.
“Well, it didn’t fly, and I knew it wouldn’t,” observed the fat man. “I told you it was too heavy.”
“Don’t--don’t speak to me!” exclaimed Noddy wrathfully.
“Don’t speak to you! Well, I like that! I guess I will speak to you long enough to ask you for my hundred dollars. I won it on a fair wager, and I want it. Here,” he said to the man who had held his share of the bet, “give me my money. I’m entitled to his, ain’t I?”
“You sure are,” said several in the crowd who had heard the bargain Noddy had made.
“I wish I’d made him put his money up,” went on the fat man. “Come on now, Professor Nixon, or whatever your name is, fork over that hundred dollars. It will come in handy for me. That thing fly! It’ll never fly in a hundred years!” and he began to laugh, which further nettled Noddy.