Fiction > Serialisations > London, 1896-1897 - St. Ives > Volume 13

ST. IVES. 263
in basso relievo : round-eyed, open-mouthed ; honest country faces, and boyish, every
one j 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 By field'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."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CAPTAIN COLENSO.
" But what be us to do with the balloon, sir ? " the coxswain demanded.
Had it been my affair, I believe I should have obeyed a ridiculous impulse
and begged them to keep it for their trouble ; so weary was I of the machine.
Byfield, however, directed them to slit a seam of the oiled silk and cut away
the car, which was by this time wholly submerged and not to be lifted. At
once the Lunardi collapsed and became manageable ; and having roped it to a
ring-bolt astern, the crew fell to their oars.
My teeth were chattering. These operations of salvage had taken time, and
it took us a further unconscionable time to cover the distance between us and the
brig as she lay hove-to, her maintopsail aback and her head-sails drawing.
" Feels like towing a whale, sir," the oarsman behind me panted.
I whipped round. The voice — yes, and the face — were the voice and face of
the seaman who sat and steered us : the voice English, of a sort ; the face of no
pattern that I recognised for English. The fellows were as like as the two drovers
Sim and Candlish had been : you might put them both at forty ; grizzled men,
pursed about the eyes with seafaring. And now that I came to look, the three
rowers forward, though mere lads, repeated their elders' features and build; the