"Strain on your grandmother, Ducie! What's _that_?"

He was staring past my shoulder, and on the instant I was aware of a
voice--not the aeronaut's--speaking behind me, and, as it were, out of
the clouds--

"I tak' ye to witness, Mister Byfield----"

Consider, if you please. For six days I had been oscillating within a
pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I
hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to
this new apprehension like a needle in a compass-box.

On the floor of the car, at my feet, lay a heap of plaid rugs and
overcoats, from which, successively and painfully disinvolved, there
emerged first a hand clutching a rusty beaver hat, next a mildly
indignant face, in spectacles, and finally the rearward of a very small
man in a seedy suit of black. He rose on his knees, his finger-tips
resting on the floor, and contemplated the aeronaut over his glasses
with a world of reproach.

"I tak' ye to witness, Mr. Byfield!"

Byfield mopped a perspiring brow.

"My dear sir," he stammered, "all a mistake--no fault of mine--explain
presently"; then, as one catching at an inspiration, "Allow me to
introduce you. Mr. Dalmahoy, Mr.----"

"My name is Sheepshanks," said the little man stiffly. "But you'll
excuse me----"

Mr. Dalmahoy interrupted with a playful cat-call.

"Hear, hear! _Silence!_ 'His name is Sheepshanks. On the Grampian Hills
his father kept his flocks--a thousand sheep,' and, I make no doubt,
shanks in proportion. Excuse you, Sheepshanks? My _dear_ sir! At this
altitude one shank was more than we had a right to expect: the plural
multiplies the obligation." Keeping a tight hold on his hysteria,
Dalmahoy steadied himself by a rope and bowed.

"And I, sir,"--as Mr. Sheepshanks' thoroughly bewildered gaze travelled
around and met mine--"I, sir, am the Vicomte Anne de Keroual de
Saint-Yves, at your service. I haven't a notion how or why you come to
be here: but you seem likely to be an acquisition. On my part," I
continued, as there leapt into my mind the stanza I had vainly tried to
recover in Mrs. McRankine's sitting-room, "I have the honour to refer
you to the inimitable Roman, Flaccus--

"'Virtus, recludens immeritis mori
Coelum negata temptat iter via,
Coetusque vulgares et udam
Spernit humum fugiente penna'

--you have the Latin, sir?"

"Not a word." He subsided upon the pile of rugs and spread out his hands
in protest. "I ta