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Updated: May 28, 2025
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 aëronaut, who was bleeding at the nose and now began to breathe stertorously.
"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.
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.
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."
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 fall of the mercury in the barometer was scarcely perceptible when the dilation of the hydrogen gas in the balloon had become considerable. The globe swelled out, and a light vapour around the mouth announced to us that the gas was commencing to escape by the safety-valve. We assisted its escape by pulling the valve-string.
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?"
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