e dropped in a
flare, a splendid but transitory pyrotechnic display. "'Eng old Grubb!"
said Bert, slapping unproductive pockets. "'E didn't ought to 'ave kep'
my box. 'E's always sneaking matches."

He reposed for a time. Then he got up, paddled about, rearranged the
ballast bags on the floor, watched the clouds for a time, and turned
over the maps on the locker. Bert liked maps, and he spent some time in
trying to find one of France or the Channel; but they were all British
ordnance maps of English counties. That set him thinking about languages
and trying to recall his seventh-standard French. "Je suis Anglais.
C'est une meprise. Je suis arrive par accident ici," he decided upon
as convenient phrases. Then it occurred to him that he would entertain
himself by reading Mr. Butteridge's letters and examining his
pocket-book, and in this manner he whiled away the afternoon.

2

He sat upon the padded locker, wrapped about very carefully, for the
air, though calm, was exhilaratingly cold and clear. He was wearing
first a modest suit of blue serge and all the unpretending underwear
of a suburban young man of fashion, with sandal-like cycling-shoes and
brown stockings drawn over his trouser ends; then the perforated
sheet proper to a Desert Dervish; then the coat and waistcoat and big
fur-trimmed overcoat of Mr. Butteridge; then a lady's large fur cloak,
and round his knees a blanket. Over his head was a tow wig, surmounted
by a large cap of Mr. Butteridge's with the flaps down over his ears.
And some fur sleeping-boots of Mr. Butteridge's warmed his feet. The car
of the balloon was small and neat, some bags of ballast the untidiest of
its contents, and he had found a light folding-table and put it at his
elbow, and on that was a glass with champagne. And about him, above and
below, was space--such a clear emptiness and silence of space as only
the aeronaut can experience.

He did not know where he might be drifting, or what might happen next.
He accepted this state of affairs with a serenity creditable to the
Smallways' courage, which one might reasonably have expected to be of a
more degenerate and contemptible quality altogether. His impression was
that he was bound to come down somewhere, and that then, if he wasn't
smashed, some one, some "society" perhaps, would probably pack him and
the balloon back to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for the
British Consul.

"Le consuelo Britannique," he decided this w