"Get ready to slip down steadily into the car."
"I am ready," replied Kenneth.
"Then go!" came from Phillip.
"Easy does it! Steady! Don't hurry! Get right down into the middle of
the car, both of you, and keep quite still."
We did as he told us, and as Kenneth joined me, we heard a faint cheer
from above, and the message:--
"Safe on the top of the balloon!"
"Look, Minnie, look!" cried Kenneth; and on a cloud-bank we saw the
image of our balloon with a figure sitting on the summit, which could
only be Phillip Rutley.
"Take care, my dearest! take care!" I besought him.
"I'm all right as long as you two keep still," he declared; but it was
not so.
After he had been up there about ten minutes trying to mend the
escape-valve, so that we could control it from the car, a puff of wind
came and overturned the balloon completely. In a moment the aspect of
the monster was transformed into a crude resemblance to the badge of the
Golden Fleece--the car with Kenneth and me in it at one end, and Phillip
Rutley hanging from the other, the huge gas-bag like the body of the
sheep of Colchis in the middle.
And now the balloon twisted round and round as if resolved to wrench
itself from Phillip's grasp, but he held on as a brave man always does
when the alternative is fight or die. The terrible difficulty he had in
getting back I shudder to think of. It is needless to recount it now.
Many times I thought that both men must lose their lives, and I should
finish this awful voyage alone. But in the end I had my arms around
Phillip's neck once more, and was thanking God for giving him back to
me.
I don't think I half expressed my gratitude to poor Kenneth, who had so
bravely and generously helped to save him. I wish I had said more when I
look back at that time now. But my love for Phillip made me blind to
everything.
Phillip was very much done up, and greatly dissatisfied with the result
of his exertions; but he soon began to make the best of things, as he
always did.
"I'm a selfish duffer, Minnie," said he. "All the good I've done by
frightening you like this is to get myself splendidly warm."
"What, have you done nothing to the valve?"
"Didn't have time. No, Moore and I must try to get at it from below,
though from what I saw before I started to go aloft, it seemed
impossible."
"But we are descending."
"Eh?"
"Descending rapidly. See how fast we are diving into that cloud below!"
"It's true! We're dropping. What can it mean?"
As he spoke we were immersed in a dense white mist, which wetted us
through as if we had been plunged in water. Then suddenly the car was
filled with whirling snow--thick masses of snow that covered us so that
we could not see each other; choked us so that we could hardly speak or
breathe.
And the cold! the cold! It cut us like knives; it beat the life out of
us as if with hammers.
This sudden, overwhelming horror struck us dumb. We could only cling
together and pray. It was plain that there must be a rent in the silk, a
large one, caused probably by the climbing of the men, a rent that might
widen at any moment and reduce the balloon to ribbons.
We were being dashed along in a wild storm of wind and snow, the
headlong force of which alone delayed the fate which seemed surely to
await us. Where should we fall? The world beneath us was near and
palpable, yet we could not distinguish any object upon it. But we fell
lower and lower, until our eyes informed us all in an instant, and we
exclaimed together:--
"_We are falling into the sea!_" Yes, there it was beneath us, raging
and leaping like a beast of prey. We should be drowned! We _must_ be
drowned! There was no hope, none!
Down we came slantwise to the water. The foam from the top of a
mountain-wave scudded through the ropes of the car. Then the hurricane
bore us up again on its fierce breast, and--yes, it was bearing us to
the shore!
We saw the coast-line, the high, red cliffs--saw the cruel rocks at
their base! Horrible! Better far to fall into the water and drown, if
die we must.
The balloon flew over the rugged boulders, the snow and the foam of the
sea indistinguishable around us, and made straight for the high,
towering precipice.
We should dash against the jagged front! The balloon was plunging down
like a maddened bull, when suddenly, within 12 ft. of the rock, there
was a thrilling cry from Kenneth Moore, and up we shot, almost clearing
the projecting summit. Almost--not quite--sufficiently to escape death;
but the car, tripping against the very verge, hurled Phillip and myself,
clasped in each other's arms, far over the level snow.
We rose unhurt, to find ourselves alone.
What had become of our comrade--my childhood's playfellow, the man who
had loved me so well, and whom I had cast away?
He was found later by some fishermen--a shapeless corpse upon the beach.
I stood awe-stricken in an outbuilding of a little inn that gave us
shelter, whither they had borne the poor shattered body, and I wept over
it as it lay there covered with the fragment of a sail.
My husband was by my side, and his voice was hushed and broken, as he
said to me:--
"Minnie, I believe that, under God, our lives were saved by Kenneth
Moore. Did you not hear that cry of his when we were about to crash into
the face of the cliff?"
"Yes, Phillip," I answered, sobbing, "and I missed him suddenly as the
balloon rose."
"You heard the words of that parting cry?"
"Yes, oh, yes! He said: '_A Wedding Gift! Minnie! A Wedding Gift!_'"
"And then?"
"He left us together."
[Illustration]