CHAPTER XXXIII

THE INCOMPLETE AERONAUTS

All this I took in at a glance: I dare say in three seconds or less. The

hubbub beneath us dropped to a low, rumbling bass. Suddenly a woman's

scream divided it--one high-pitched, penetrating scream, followed by

silence. And then, as a pack of hounds will start into cry, voice after

voice caught up the scream and reduplicated it until the whole enclosure

rang with alarm.

"Hullo!" Byfield called to me: "what the deuce is happening now?" and

ran to his side of the car. "Good Lord, it's Dalmahoy!"

It was. Beneath us, at the tail of a depending rope, that unhappy

lunatic dangled between earth and sky. He had been the first to cut the

tether; and, having severed it below his grasp, had held on while the

others cut loose, taking even the asinine precaution to loop the end

twice round his wrist. Of course the upward surge of the balloon had

heaved him off his feet, and his muddled instinct did the rest.

Clutching now with both hands, he was borne aloft like a lamb from the

flock.

So we reasoned afterwards. "The grapnel!" gasped Byfield: for Dalmahoy's

rope was fastened beneath the floor of the car, and not to be reached by

us. We fumbled to cast the grapnel loose, and shouted down together--

"For God's sake hold on! Catch the anchor when it comes! You'll break

your neck if you drop!"

He swung into sight again beyond the edge of the floor, and uplifted a

strained, white face.

We cast loose the grapnel, lowered it and jerked it towards him. He

swung past it like a pendulum, caught at it with one hand, and missed:

came flying back on the receding curve, and missed again. At the third

attempt he blundered right against it, and flung an arm over one of the

flukes, next a leg, and in a trice we were hauling up, hand over hand.

We dragged him inboard. He was pale, but undefeatedly voluble.

"Must apologise to you fellows, really. Dam silly, clumsy kind of thing

to do; might have been awkward too. Thank you, Byfield, my boy, I will:

two fingers only--a harmless steadier."

He took the flask and was lifting it. But his jaw dropped and his hand

hung arrested.

"He's going to faint," I cried. "The strain----"

"Strain on your grandmother, Ducie! What's _that_?"

He was staring past my shoulder, and on the instant I was aware of a

voice--not the aeronaut's--speaking behind me, and, as it were, out of

the clouds--

"I tak' ye to witness, Mister Byfield----"

Consider, if you please. For six days I had been oscillating within a

pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I

hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to

this new apprehension like a needle in a compass-box.

On the floor of the car, at my feet, lay a heap of plaid rugs and

overcoats, from which, successively and painfully disinvolved, there

emerged first a hand clutching a rusty beaver hat, next a mildly

indignant face, in spectacles, and finally the rearward of a very small

man in a seedy suit of black. He rose on his knees, his finger-tips

resting on the floor, and contemplated the aeronaut over his glasses

with a world of reproach.

"I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!"

Byfield mopped a perspiring brow.

"My dear sir," he stammered, "all a mistake--no fault of mine--explain

presently"; then, as one catching at an inspiration, "Allow me to

introduce you. Mr. Dalmahoy, Mr.----"

"My name is Sheepshanks," said the little man stiffly. "But you'll

excuse me----"

Mr. Dalmahoy interrupted with a playful cat-call.

"Hear, hear! _Silence!_ 'His name is Sheepshanks. On the Grampian Hills

his father kept his flocks--a thousand sheep,' and, I make no doubt,

shanks in proportion. Excuse you, Sheepshanks? My _dear_ sir! At this

altitude one shank was more than we had a right to expect: the plural

multiplies the obligation." Keeping a tight hold on his hysteria,

Dalmahoy steadied himself by a rope and bowed.

"And I, sir,"--as Mr. Sheepshanks' thoroughly bewildered gaze travelled

around and met mine--"I, sir, am the Vicomte Anne de Keroual de

Saint-Yves, at your service. I haven't a notion how or why you come to

be here: but you seem likely to be an acquisition. On my part," I

continued, as there leapt into my mind the stanza I had vainly tried to

recover in Mrs. McRankine's sitting-room, "I have the honour to refer

you to the inimitable Roman, Flaccus--

"'Virtus, recludens immeritis mori

Coelum negata temptat iter via,

Coetusque vulgares et udam

Spernit humum fugiente penna'

--you have the Latin, sir?"

"Not a word." He subsided upon the pile of rugs and spread out his hands

in protest. "I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!"

"Then in a minute or so I will do myself the pleasure of construing,"

said I, and turned to scan the earth we were leaving--I had not guessed

how rapidly.

We contemplated it from the height of six hundred feet--or so Byfield

asserted after consulting his barometer. He added that this was a mere

nothing: the wonder was the balloon had risen at all with one-half of

the total folly of Edinburgh clinging to the car. I passed the possible

inaccuracy and certain ill-temper of this calculation. He had (he

explained) made jettison of at least a hundred-weight of sand ballast. I

could only hope it had fallen on my cousin. To me, six hundred feet

appeared a very respectable eminence. And the view was ravishing.

The _Lunardi_, mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost

vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a

heaven of exquisite blue. Below us, by some trick of eyesight, the

country had grown concave, its horizons curving up like the rim of a

shallow bowl--a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea-fog, but to our

eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow.

Upon it the travelling shadow of the balloon became no shadow but a

stain: an amethyst (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties

than colour and lucency. At times thrilled by no perceptible wind,

rather by the pulse of the sun's rays, the froth shook and parted: and

then behold, deep in the _crevasses_, vignetted and shining, an acre or

two of the earth of man's business and fret--tilled slopes of the

Lothians, ships dotted on the Forth, the capital like a hive that some

child had smoked--the ear of fancy could almost hear it buzzing.

I snatched the glass from Byfield, and brought it to focus upon one of

these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it

were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures

standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed

again. Flora's handkerchief! Blessings on the brave hand that waved

it!--at a moment when (as I have since heard and knew without need of

hearing) her heart was down in her shoes, or, to speak accurately, in

the milkmaid Janet's. Singular in many things, she was at one with the

rest of her sex in its native and incurable distrust of man's

inventions.

I am bound to say that my own faith in aerostatics was a plant--a

sensitive plant--of extremely tender growth. Either I failed, a while

back, in painting the emotions of my descent of the Devil's Elbow, or

the reader knows that I am a chicken-hearted fellow about a height. I

make him a present of the admission. Set me on a plane superficies, and

I will jog with all the _insouciance_ of a rolling stone: toss me in

air, and, with the stone in the child's adage, I am in the hands of the

devil. Even to the qualified instability of a sea-going ship I have ever

committed myself with resignation rather than confidence.

But to my unspeakable relief the _Lunardi_ floated upwards, and

continued to float, almost without a tremor. Only by reading the

barometer, or by casting scraps of paper overboard, could we tell that

the machine moved at all. Now and again we revolved slowly: so Byfield's

compass informed us, but for ourselves we had never guessed it. Of

dizziness I felt no longer a symptom, for the sufficient reason that the

provocatives were nowhere at hand. We were the only point in space,

without possibility of comparison with another. We were made one with

the clean silences receiving us; and speaking only for the Vicomte Anne

de Saint-Yves, I dare assert that for five minutes a newly bathed infant

had not been less conscious of original sin.

"But look here, you know"--it was Byfield at my elbow--"I'm a public

character, by George; and this puts me in a devilish awkward position."

"So it does," I agreed. "You proclaimed yourself a solitary voyager: and

here, to the naked eye, are four of us."

"And pray how can I help that? If, at the last moment, a couple of

lunatics come rushing in----"

"They still leave Sheepshanks to be accounted for." Byfield began to

irritate me. I turned to the stowaway. "Perhaps," said I, "Mr.

Sheepshanks will explain."

"I paid in advance," Mr. Sheepshanks began, eager to seize the opening

presented. "The fact is, I'm a married man."

"Already at two points you have the advantage of us. Proceed, sir."

"You were good enough, just now, to give me your name, Mr.----"

"The Vicomte Anne de Keroual de Saint-Yves."

"It is a somewhat difficult name to remember."

"If that be all, sir, within two minutes you shall have a _memoria

technica_ prepared for use during the voyage."

Mr. Sheepshanks harked back. "I am a married man, and--d'ye see?--Mrs.

Sheepshanks, as you might say, has no sympathy with ballooning. She was

a Guthrie of Dumfries."

"Which accounts for it, to be sure," said I.

"To me, sir, on the contrary, aerostatics have long been an alluring

study. I might even, Mr. ----, I might even, I say, term it the passion

of my life." His mild eyes shone behind their glasses. "I remember

Vincent Lunardi, sir. I was present in Heriot's Gardens when he made an

ascension there in October '85. He came down at Cupar. The Society of

Gentlemen Golfers at Cupar presented him with an address; and at

Edinburgh he was admitted Knight Companion of the Beggar's Benison, a

social company, or (as I may say) crew, since defunct. A thin-faced man,

sir. He wore a peculiar bonnet, if I may use the expression, very much

cocked up behind. The shape became fashionable. He once pawned his watch

with me, sir; that being my profession. I regret to say he redeemed it

subsequently: otherwise I might have the pleasure of showing it to you.

O yes, the theory of ballooning has long been a passion with me. But in

deference to Mrs. Sheepshanks I have abstained from the actual

practice--until to-day. To tell you the truth, my wife believes me to be

brushing off the cobwebs in the Kyles of Bute."

"_Are_ there any cobwebs in the Kyles of Bute?" asked Dalmahoy, in a

tone unnaturally calm.

"A figure of speech, sir--as one might say, holiday-keeping there. I

paid Mr. Byfield five pounds in advance. I have his receipt. And the

stipulation was that I should be concealed in the car and make the

ascension with him alone."

"Are we then to take it, sir, that our company offends you?" I demanded.

He made haste to disclaim. "Not at all: decidedly not in the least. But

the chances were for less agreeable associates." I bowed. "And a

bargain's a bargain," he wound up.

"So it is," said I. "Byfield, hand Mr. Sheepshanks back his five

pounds."

"O, come now!" the aeronaut objected. "And who may you be, to be

ordering a man about?"

"I believe I have already answered that question twice in your hearing."

"Mosha the Viscount Thingamy de Something-or-other? I dare say!"

"Have you any objection?"

"Not the smallest. For all I care, you are Robert Burns, or Napoleon

Buonaparte, or anything, from the Mother of the Gracchi to Balaam's Ass.

But I knew you first as Mr. Ducie; and you may take it that I'm Mr.

Don't-see." He reached up a hand towards the valve-string.

"What are you proposing to do?"

"To descend."

"What?--back to the enclosure?"

"Scarcely that, seeing that we have struck a northerly current, and are

travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour, perhaps. That's Broad

Law to the south of us, as I make it out."

"But why descend at all?"

"Because it sticks in my head that some one in the crowd called you by a

name that wasn't Ducie; and by a title, for that matter, which didn't

sound like 'Viscount.' I took it at the time for a constable's trick;

but I begin to have my strong doubts."

The fellow was dangerous. I stooped nonchalantly on pretence of picking

up a plaid; for the air had turned bitterly cold of a sudden.

"Mr. Byfield, a word in your private ear, if you will."

"As you please," said he, dropping the valve-string.

We leaned together over the breastwork of the car. "If I mistake not," I

said, speaking low, "the name was Champdivers."

He nodded.

"The gentleman who raised that foolish but infernally risky cry was my

own cousin, the Viscount de Saint-Yves. I give you my word of honour to

that." Observing that this staggered him, I added, mighty slily, "I

suppose it doesn't occur to you now that the whole affair was a game,

for a friendly wager?"

"No," he answered brutally, "it doesn't. And what's more, it won't go

down."

"In that respect," said I, with a sudden change of key, "it resembles

your balloon. But I admire the obstinacy of your suspicions; since, as a

matter of fact, I am Champdivers."

"The mur----"

"Certainly not. I killed the man in fair duel."

"Ha!" he eyed me with sour distrust. "That is what you have to prove."

"Man alive, you don't expect me to demonstrate it up here, by the simple

apparatus of ballooning?"

"There is no talk of 'up here,'" said he, and reached for the

valve-string.

"Say 'down there,' then. Down there it is no business of the accused to

prove his innocence. By what I have heard of the law, English or Scotch,

the boot is on the other leg. But I'll tell you what I _can_ prove. I

can prove, sir, that I have been a deal in your company of late; that I

supped with you and Mr. Dalmahoy no longer ago than Wednesday. You may

put it that we three are here together again by accident; that you never

suspected me; that my invasion of your machine was a complete surprise

to you, and, so far as you were concerned, wholly fortuitous. But ask

yourself what any intelligent jury is likely to make of that

cock-and-bull story." Mr. Byfield was visibly shaken. "Add to this," I

proceeded, "that you have to explain Sheepshanks; to confess that you

gulled the public by advertising a lonely ascension, and haranguing a

befooled multitude to the same intent, when, all the time, you had a

companion concealed in the car. 'A public character!' you call yourself!

My word, sir! there'll be no mistake about it, this time."

I paused, took breath, and shook a finger at him:--

"Now just you listen to me, Mr. Byfield. Pull that string, and a sadly

discredited aeronaut descends upon the least charitable of worlds. Why,

sir, in any case your game in Edinburgh is up. The public is dog-tired

of you and your ascensions, as any observant child in to-day's crowd

could have told you. The truth was there staring you in the face; and

next time even your purblind vanity must recognise it. Consider; I

offered you two hundred guineas for the convenience of your balloon. I

now double that offer on condition that I become its owner during this

trip, and that you manipulate it as I wish. Here are the notes; and out

of the total you will refund five pounds to Mr. Sheepshanks."

Byfield's complexion had grown streaky as his balloon; and with colours

not so very dissimilar. I had stabbed upon his vital self-conceit, and

the man was really hurt.

"You must give me time," he stammered.

"By all means." I knew he was beaten. But only the poorness of my case

excused me, and I had no affection for the weapons used. I turned with

relief to the others. Dalmahoy was seated on the floor of the car, and

helping Mr. Sheepshanks to unpack a carpet bag.

"This will be whisky," the little pawnbroker announced: "three bottles.

My wife said, 'Surely, Elshander, ye'll find whisky where ye're gaun.'

'No doubt I will,' said I, 'but I'm not very confident of its quality;

and it's a far step.' My itinerary, Mr. Dalmahoy, was planned from

Greenock to the Kyles of Bute and back, and thence coastwise to

Saltcoats and the land of Burns. I told her, if she had anything to

communicate, to address her letter to the care of the postmaster,

Ayr--ha, ha!" He broke off and gazed reproachfully into Dalmahoy's

impassive face. "Ayr--air," he explained: "a little play upon words."

"Skye would have been better," suggested Dalmahoy, without moving an

eyelid.

"Skye? Dear me--capital, capital! Only, you see," he urged, "she

wouldn't expect me to be in Skye."

A minute later he drew me aside. "Excellent company your friend is, sir:

most gentlemanly manners; but at times, if I may so say, not very gleg."

My hands by this time were numb with cold. We had been ascending

steadily, and Byfield's English thermometer stood at thirteen degrees. I

borrowed from the heap a thicker overcoat, in the pocket of which I was

lucky enough to find a pair of furred gloves; and leaned over for

another look below, still with a corner of my eye for the aeronaut, who

stood biting his nails, as far from me as the car allowed.

The sea-fog had vanished, and the south of Scotland lay spread beneath

us from sea to sea, like a map in monotint. Nay, yonder was England,

with the Solway cleaving the coast--a broad, bright spearhead, slightly

bent at the tip--and the fells of Cumberland beyond, mere hummocks on

the horizon; all else flat as a board or as the bottom of a saucer.

White threads of high-road connected town to town: the intervening hills

had fallen down, and the towns, as if in fright, had shrunk into

themselves, contracting their suburbs as a snail his horns. The old poet

was right who said that the Olympians had a delicate view. The

lace-makers of Valenciennes might have had the tracing of those towns

and high-roads; those knots of _guipure_ and ligatures of finest

_reseau_-work. And when I considered that what I looked down on--this,

with its arteries and nodules of public traffic--was a nation; that each

silent nodule held some thousands of men, each man moderately ready to

die in defence of his shopboard and hen-roost; it came into my mind that

my Emperor's emblem was the bee, and this Britain the spider's web, sure

enough.

Byfield came across and stood at my elbow.

"Mr. Ducie, I have considered your offer, and accept it. It's a curst

position----"

"For a public character," I put in affably.

"Don't, sir! I beg that you don't. Your words just now made me suffer a

good deal: the more, that I perceive a part of them to be true. An

aeronaut, sir, has ambition--how can he help it? The public, the

newspapers, feed it for a while; they _fete_, and flatter, and applaud

him. But in its heart the public ranks him with the mountebank, and

reserves the right to drop him when tired of his tricks. Is it wonderful

that he forgets this sometimes? For in his own thoughts he is not a

mountebank--no, by God, he is not!"

The man spoke with genuine passion. I held out my hand.

"Mr. Byfield, my words were brutal. I beg you will allow me to take them

back."

He shook his head. "They were true, sir; partly true, that is."

"I am not so sure. A balloon, as you hint and I begin to discover, may

alter the perspective of man's ambitions. Here are the notes; and on the

top of them I give you my word that you are not abetting a criminal. How

long should the _Lunardi_ be able to maintain itself in the air?"

"I have never tried it; but I calculate on twenty hours--say twenty-four

at a pinch."

"We will test it. The current, I see, is still north-east, or from that

to north-by-east. And our height?"

He consulted the barometer. "Something under three miles."

Dalmahoy heard, and whooped. "Hi! you fellows, come to lunch!

Sandwiches, shortbread, and cleanest Glenlivet--Elshander's Feast:

"'Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skies----'

Sheepshanks provided the whisky. Rise, Elshander: observe that you have

no worlds left to conquer, and, having shed the perfunctory tear, pass

the corkscrew. Come along, Ducie: come, my Daedalian boy; if you are not

hungry, I am, and so is--Sheepshanks--what the dickens do you mean by

consorting with a singular verb? _Verbum cum nominativo_--I should say,

so _are_ sheepshanks."

Byfield produced from one of the lockers a pork pie and a bottle of

sherry (the _viaticum_ in choice and assortment almost explained the

man) and we sat down to the repast. Dalmahoy's tongue ran like a brook.

He addressed Mr. Sheepshanks with light-hearted impartiality as Philip's

royal son, as the Man of Ross, as the divine Clarinda. He elected him

Professor of Marital Diplomacy to the University of Cramond. He passed

the bottle and called on him for a toast, a song--"Oblige me,

Sheepshanks, by making the welkin ring." Mr. Sheepshanks beamed, and

gave us a sentiment instead. The little man was enjoying himself

amazingly. "Fund of spirits your friend has, to be sure, sir--quite a

fund."

Either my own spirits were running low or the bitter cold had congealed

them. I was conscious of my thin ball-suit, and moreover of a masterful

desire of sleep. I felt no inclination for food, but drained half a

tumblerful of the Sheepshanks whisky, and crawled beneath the pile of

plaids. Byfield considerately helped to arrange them. He may or may not

have caught some accent of uncertainty in my thanks: at any rate he

thought fit to add the assurance, "You may trust me, Mr. Ducie." I saw

that I could, and began almost to like the fellow.

In this posture I dozed through the afternoon. In dreams I heard

Dalmahoy and Sheepshanks lifting their voices in amoebaean song, and

became languidly aware that they were growing uproarious. I heard

Byfield expostulating, apparently in vain: for I awoke next to find that

Sheepshanks had stumbled over me while illustrating, with an empty

bottle, the motions of tossing the caber. "Old Hieland sports,"

explained Dalmahoy, wiping tears of vain laughter: "his mother's uncle

was out in the 'Forty-Five. Sorry to wake you, Ducie: balow, my babe!"

It did not occur to me to smoke danger in this tomfoolery. I turned over

and dozed again.

It seemed but a minute later that a buzzing in my ears awoke me, with a

stab of pain as though my temples were being split with a wedge. On the

instant I heard my name cried aloud, and sat up, to find myself blinking

in a broad flood of moonlight over against the agitated face of

Dalmahoy.

"Byfield----" I began.

Dalmahoy pointed. The aeronaut lay at my feet, collapsed like some

monstrous marionette, with legs and arms a-splay. Across his legs, with

head propped against a locker, reclined Sheepshanks, and gazed upwards

with an approving smile. "Awkward business," explained Dalmahoy, between

gasps. "Sheepshanks 'nmanageable; can't carry his liquor like a

gentleman: thought it funny 'pitch out ballast. Byfield lost his temper:

worst thing in the world. One thing I pride myself, 'menable to reason.

No holding Sheepshanks: Byfield got him down; too late; faint both of

us. Sheepshanks wants ring for 'shistance: pulls string: breaks. When

string breaks _Lunardi_ won't fall--tha's the devil of it."

"_With_ my tol-de-rol," Mr. Sheepshanks murmured. "Pretty--very pretty."

I cast a look aloft. The _Lunardi_ was transformed: every inch of it

frosted as with silver. All the ropes and cords ran with silver too, or

liquid mercury. And in the midst of this sparkling cage, a little below

the hoop, and five feet at least above reach, dangled the broken

valve-string.

"Well," I said, "you have made a handsome mess of it! Pass me the broken

end, and be good enough not to lose your head."

"I wish I could," he groaned, pressing it between his palms. "My dear

sir, I'm not frightened, if that is your meaning."

I was, and horribly. But the thing had to be done. The reader will

perhaps forgive me for touching shyly on the next two or three minutes,

which still recur on the smallest provocation and play bogey with my

dreams. To balance on the edge of night, quaking, gripping a frozen

rope; to climb, and feel the pit of one's stomach slipping like a bucket

in a fathomless well--I suppose the intolerable pains in my head spurred

me to the attempt--these and the urgent shortness of my breathing--much

as toothache will drive a man up to the dentist's chair. I knotted the

broken ends of the valve-string and slid back into the car: then tugged

the valve open, while with my disengaged arm I wiped the sweat from my

forehead. It froze upon the coat-cuff.

In a minute or so the drumming in my ears grew less violent. Dalmahoy

bent over the aeronaut, who was bleeding at the nose and now began to

breathe stertorously. Sheepshanks had fallen into placid slumber. I kept

the valve open until we descended into a stratum of fog--from which, no

doubt, the _Lunardi_ had lately risen: the moisture collected here would

account for its congelated coat of silver. By and by, still without

rising, we were quit of the fog, and the moon swept the hollow beneath

us, rescuing solitary scraps and sheets of water and letting them slip

again like imprehensible ghosts. Small fiery eyes opened and shut on us;

cressets of flame on factory chimneys, more and more frequent. I studied

the compass. Our course lay south-by-west. But our whereabouts?

Dalmahoy, being appealed to, suggested Glasgow: and thenceforward I let

him alone. Byfield snored on.

I pulled out my watch, which I had forgotten to wind; and found it run

down. The hands stood at twenty minutes past four. Daylight, then,

could not be far off. Eighteen hours--say twenty: and Byfield had

guessed our rate at one time to be thirty miles an hour. Five hundred

miles----

A line of silver ahead: a ribbon drawn taut across the night,

clean-edged, broadening--the sea! In a minute or two I caught the murmur

of the coast. "Five hundred miles," I began to reckon again, and a holy

calm dawned on me as the _Lunardi_ swept high over the fringing surf,

and its voice faded back with the glimmer of a whitewashed

fishing-haven.

I roused Dalmahoy and pointed. "The sea!"

"Looks like it. Which, I wonder?"

"The English Channel, man."

"I say--are you sure?"

"Eh?" exclaimed Byfield, waking up and coming forward with a stagger.

"The English Channel."

"The French fiddlestick," said he with equal promptness.

"O, have it as you please!" I retorted. It was not worth arguing with

the man.

"What is the hour?"

I told him that my watch had run down. His had done the same. Dalmahoy

did not carry one. We searched the still prostrate Sheepshanks: his had

stopped at ten minutes to four. Byfield replaced it and underlined his

disgust with a kick.

"A nice lot!" he ejaculated. "I owe you my thanks, Mr. Ducie, all the

same. It was touch and go with us, and my head's none the better for

it."

"But I say," expostulated Dalmahoy. "France! This is getting past a

joke."

"So you are really beginning to discover that, are you?"

Byfield stood, holding by a rope, and studied the darkness ahead. Beside

him I hugged my convictions--hour after hour, it seemed; and still the

dawn did not come.

He turned at length.

"I see a coast line to the south of us. This will be the Bristol

Channel: and the balloon is sinking. Pitch out some ballast if these

idiots have left any."

I found a couple of sand bags and emptied them overboard. The coast, as

a matter of fact, was close at hand. But the _Lunardi_ rose in time to

clear the cliff barrier by some hundreds of feet. A wild sea ran on it:

of its surf, as of a grey and agonising face, we caught one glimpse as

we hurled high and clear over the roar: and, a minute later, to our

infinite dismay, were actually skimming the surface of a black hillside.

"Hold on!" screamed Byfield, and I had barely time to tighten my grip

when crash! the car struck the turf and pitched us together in a heap on

the floor. Bump! the next blow shook us like peas in a bladder. I drew

my legs up and waited for the third.

None came. The car gyrated madly and swung slowly back to equilibrium.

We picked ourselves up, tossed rugs, coats, instruments, promiscuously

overboard, and mounted again. The chine of the tall hill, our

stumbling-block, fell back and was lost, and we swept forward into

formless shadow.

"Confound it!" said Byfield, "the land can't be uninhabited!"

It was, for aught we could see. Not a light showed anywhere; and to make

things worse the moon had abandoned us. For one good hour we swept

through chaos to the tuneless lamentations of Sheepshanks, who declared

that his collar-bone was broken.

Then Dalmahoy flung a hand upwards. Night lay like a sack around and

below us: but right aloft, at the zenith, day was trembling. Slowly

established, it spread and descended upon us until it touched a distant

verge of hills, and there, cut by the rim of the rising sun, flowed

suddenly with streams of crimson.

"Over with the grapnel!" Byfield sprang to the valve-string and pulled;

and the featureless earth rushed up towards us.

The sunlight through which we were falling had not touched it yet. It

leaped on us, drenched in shadow, like some incalculable beast from its

covert: a land shaggy with woods and coppices. Between the woods a

desolate river glimmered. A colony of herons rose from the tree-tops

beneath us and flew squawking for the farther shore.

"This won't do," said Byfield, and shut the escape. "We must win clear

of these woods. Hullo!" Ahead of us the river widened abruptly into a

shining estuary, populous with anchored shipping. Tall hills flanked it,

and in the curve of the westernmost hill a grey town rose from the

waterside: its terraces climbing, tier upon tier, like seats in an

amphitheatre; its chimneys lifting their smoke over against the dawn.

The tiers curved away southward to a round castle and a spit of rock,

off which a brig under white canvas stood out for the line of the open

sea.

We swept across the roadstead towards the town, trailing our grapnel as

it were a hooked fish, a bare hundred feet above the water. Faces stared

up at us from the ships' decks. The crew of one lowered a boat to

pursue; we were half a mile away before it touched the water. Should we

clear the town? At Byfield's orders we stripped off our overcoats and

stood ready to lighten ship; but seeing that the deflected wind in the

estuary was carrying us towards the suburbs and the harbour's mouth, he

changed his mind.

"It is devil or deep sea," he announced. "We will try the grapnel. Look

to it, Ducie, while I take the valve!" He pressed a clasp-knife into my

hand. "Cut, if I give the word."

We descended a few feet. We were skimming the ridge. The grapnel

touched, and, in the time it takes you to wink, had ploughed through a

kitchen garden, uprooting a regiment of currant bushes; had leaped clear

and was caught in the eaves of a wooden outhouse, fetching us up with a

dislocating shock. I heard a rending noise, and picked myself up in time

to see the building collapse like a house of cards, and a pair of

demented pigs emerge from the ruins and plunge across the garden-beds.

And with that I was pitched off my feet again as the hook caught in an

iron _chevaux-de-frise_, and held fast.

"Hold tight!" shouted Byfield, as the car lurched and struggled,

careering desperately. "Don't cut, man! What the devil!"

Our rope had tautened over the coping of a high stone wall; and the

straining _Lunardi_--a very large and handsome blossom, bending on a

very thin stalk--overhung a gravelled yard; and lo! from the centre of

it stared up at us, rigid with amazement, the faces of a squad of

British red-coats!

I believe that the first glimpse of that abhorred uniform brought my

knife down upon the rope. In two seconds I had slashed through the

strands, and the flaccid machine lifted and bore us from their ken. But

I see their faces yet, as in _basso relievo_: round-eyed, open-mouthed;

honest country faces, and boyish, every one: an awkward squad of

recruits at drill, fronting a red-headed sergeant; the sergeant, with

cane held horizontally across and behind his thighs, his face upturned

with the rest, and "Irishman" on every feature of it. And so the vision

fleeted, and Byfield's language claimed attention. The man took the

whole vocabulary of British profanity at a rush, and swore himself to a

standstill. As he paused for second wind I struck in:

"Mr. Byfield, you open the wrong valve. We drift, as you say,

towards--nay, over the open sea. As master of this balloon, I suggest

that we descend within reasonable distance of the brig yonder; which, as

I make out, is backing her sails; which, again, can only mean that she

observes us and is preparing to lower a boat."

He saw the sense of this, and turned to business, though with a snarl.

As a gull from the cliff, the _Lunardi_ slanted downwards, and passing

the brig by less than a cable's length to leeward, soused into the sea.

I say "soused": for I confess that the shock belied the promise of our

easy descent. The _Lunardi_ floated: but it also drove before the wind.

And as it dragged the car after it like a tilted pail, the four drenched

and blinded aeronauts struggled through the spray and gripped the hoop,

the netting--nay, dug their nails into the oiled silk. In its new

element the machine became inspired with a sudden infernal malice. It

sank like a pillow if we tried to climb it: it rolled us over in the

brine; it allowed us no moment for a backward glance. I spied a small

cutter-rigged craft tacking towards us, a mile and more to leeward, and

wondered if the captain of the brig had left our rescue to it. He had

not. I heard a shout behind us; a rattle of oars as the bowmen shipped

them; and a hand gripped my collar. So one by one we were

plucked--uncommon specimens!--from the deep; rescued from what Mr.

Sheepshanks a minute later, as he sat on a thwart and wiped his

spectacles, justly termed "a predicament, sir, as disconcerting as any

my experience supplies."