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asunder;
    He screams defiance at the lightning’s glare,
    And at the thunder’s crash he laughs like thunder.”
    Breckenridge had Freddy repeat the verse several times before he would make any comment. Then he said: “My friend, aside from being one of the finest compliments ever paid our race, I do not believe that Shakespeare himself could have achieved a loftier flight of fancy. ‘Flight of fancy’—ha! Not bad, eh? ‘The fearless eagle tum te-tum te-tum—” What rhythm! What sweep! And that phrase: ‘at the thunder’s crash—’”
    A distant low grumble interrupted his words. He turned sharply and peered up at the sky. Black clouds were piling up over the wooded hills, and a gust of wind sung through the ropes and set the basket swaying.
    â€œThunder!” muttered Breckenridge. “I—ah, h’m, dear me; I’m afraid I must be going. My little Waldemar—alone in his nest, you know. Mother away. Visiting her aunt this weekend. Well, see you later.” And he spread his wings and dropped from the edge of the basket. In a minute or two he had vanished in the northern sky.
    â€œThat’s funny,” said Freddy. “Fearless eagle, eh? And scared of thunderstorms. He was scared, you know.”
    â€œAnd so am I, Freddy,” said Emma, as she watched fearfully the boiling cloud masses that crept over the sun.
    â€œWell, I am too,” said Freddy. “But there’s nowhere to go. We’ll just have to ride it out. We’d better snug down as well as we can. I’ll call the Webbs.”
    The spiders came up over the edge of the basket, and Freddy found them a cozy refuge from the storm in one of the oiled paper envelopes the sandwiches had been wrapped in. He put the envelope in the hamper, then he and the ducks covered themselves up with blankets and ponchos, and having tucked themselves in carefully, waited for the storm to break. Which it presently did with a blinding flash and a crash as if the whole sky had fallen in on them. The basket gave a lurch as the wind struck it; the rain pelted like hundreds of drums on the stretched rubber of the balloon; and then swaying and jerking crazily, balloon and basket, pig and ducks and spiders, went careering off through the lightning slashed darkness.

Chapter 6
    It was a wild ride the animals had through that thunderstorm, and it lasted a long time. For of course they went along with it. When you’re on the ground, a storm will come up in one part of the sky and drive pouring and roaring above you, and then go grumbling off over the hills in another part of the sky. But when you are in a balloon, you drive along with it. It seemed to Freddy as if there were a dozen thunderstorms, and that the balloon would be carried like a football by one of them for a while, and then passed to another, and then another. It lurched and swung dizzily, with ominous creaks and crackings that could be heard plainly above the hiss and rattle of wind and rain. Freddy expected any minute to have the whole thing torn to pieces around them.
    But at last the storm blew itself out. The thunder stopped rolling, the rain slackened, and the motion of the basket grew quieter. Fortunately the ponchos had kept them dry. Freddy crawled out to look around. But although the sky was clearing, the sun had set and it was too dark to see much. He got some sandwiches from the hamper and he and Alice ate their supper. Emma had a sick headache from the motion, and didn’t want any. Then he opened the oiled paper envelope to see if the Webbs were all right.
    â€œMy, my, what a trip!” said Mr. Webb. “Mother’s quite done up; I think perhaps now things have quieted down we’ll stay right here and try to get some sleep.”
    â€œI think we all need sleep,” said Freddy. And as the ducks agreed with him, they curled up again under the blankets in the bottom of the basket.
    Perhaps because