In fact, just about then who should arrive, aboard a stately semirigid craft of Italian design, but the boys' longtime friend and mentor Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University, a look of barely suppressed terror on his features, desperately preoccupied during the craft's descent with keeping secured to his head a stovepipe hat whose dents, scars, and departures from the cylindrical spoke as eloquently as its outdated style of a long and adventuresome history.
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Let me first get this out of the way: uhhhhh huh huh huh he said "semirigid."
Professor Heino Vanderjuice stepping out of a ship and into the Chums' story feels like an old Saturday Morning cartoon or children's entertainment program. "Hey kids! Look who's here: it's old Professor Heino Vanderjuice!" This sudden appearance definitely feels like guest star material.
"Professor Heino Vanderjuice"
Previously, I discussed the Professor's name a bit. One possibility I thought up for the meaning of his name was The Wandering Jew. The commentary on his beaten and battered stovepipe, an old fashioned hat even in 1893, and the mention that it speaks of "a long and adventuresome history" speaks to the possibility that the Professor is much older than he appears. Who else, other than an immortal, could come up with impossible inventions for the Chums of Chance to use in their airship? And if the Professor is the Wandering Jew, does this not suggest that maybe the Chums are also supernatural? Why else would such a legendary figure act as their perennial friend and mentor?
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