ng from his lips, and everything was instantly bedewed
and wet.

He had an impression of a snowstorm pouring with unexampled and
increasing fury UPWARD; then he realised that he was falling faster and
faster.

Imperceptibly a sound grew upon his ears. The great silence of the world
was at an end. What was this confused sound?

He craned his head over the side, concerned, perplexed.

First he seemed to see, and then not to see. Then he saw clearly little
edges of foam pursuing each other, and a wide waste of weltering waters
below him. Far away was a pilot boat with a big sail bearing dim black
letters, and a little pinkish-yellow light, and it was rolling and
pitching, rolling and pitching in a gale, while he could feel no wind
at, all. Soon the sound of waters was loud and near. He was dropping,
dropping--into the sea!

He became convulsively active.

"Ballast!" he cried, and seized a little sack from the floor, and heaved
it overboard. He did not wait for the effect of that, but sent another
after it. He looked over in time to see a minute white splash in the dim
waters below him, and then he was back in the snow and clouds again.

He sent out quite needlessly a third sack of ballast and a fourth, and
presently had the immense satisfaction of soaring up out of the damp and
chill into the clear, cold, upper air in which the day still lingered.
"Thang-God!" he said, with all his heart.

A few stars now had pierced the blue, and in the east there shone
brightly a prolate moon.

4

That first downward plunge filled Bert with a haunting sense of
boundless waters below. It was a summer's night, but it seemed to him,
nevertheless, extraordinarily long. He had a feeling of insecurity that
he fancied quite irrationally the sunrise would dispel. Also he was
hungry. He felt, in the dark, in the locker, put his fingers in
the Roman pie, and got some sandwiches, and he also opened rather
successfully a half-bottle of champagne. That warmed and restored him,
he grumbled at Grubb about the matches, wrapped himself up warmly on the
locker, and dozed for a time. He got up once or twice to make sure that
he was still securely high above the sea. The first time the moonlit
clouds were white and dense, and the shadow of the balloon ran athwart
them like a dog that followed; afterwards they seemed thinner. As he lay
still, staring up at the huge dark balloon above, he made a discovery.
His--or rather Mr. Butteridge's--waistco