till prostrate Sheepshanks: his had
stopped at ten minutes to four. Byfield replaced it and underlined his
disgust with a kick.

"A nice lot!" he ejaculated. "I owe you my thanks, Mr. Ducie, all the
same. It was touch and go with us, and my head's none the better for
it."

"But I say," expostulated Dalmahoy. "France! This is getting past a
joke."

"So you are really beginning to discover that, are you?"

Byfield stood, holding by a rope, and studied the darkness ahead. Beside
him I hugged my convictions--hour after hour, it seemed; and still the
dawn did not come.

He turned at length.

"I see a coast line to the south of us. This will be the Bristol
Channel: and the balloon is sinking. Pitch out some ballast if these
idiots have left any."

I found a couple of sand bags and emptied them overboard. The coast, as
a matter of fact, was close at hand. But the _Lunardi_ rose in time to
clear the cliff barrier by some hundreds of feet. A wild sea ran on it:
of its surf, as of a grey and agonising face, we caught one glimpse as
we hurled high and clear over the roar: and, a minute later, to our
infinite dismay, were actually skimming the surface of a black hillside.
"Hold on!" screamed Byfield, and I had barely time to tighten my grip
when crash! the car struck the turf and pitched us together in a heap on
the floor. Bump! the next blow shook us like peas in a bladder. I drew
my legs up and waited for the third.

None came. The car gyrated madly and swung slowly back to equilibrium.
We picked ourselves up, tossed rugs, coats, instruments, promiscuously
overboard, and mounted again. The chine of the tall hill, our
stumbling-block, fell back and was lost, and we swept forward into
formless shadow.

"Confound it!" said Byfield, "the land can't be uninhabited!"

It was, for aught we could see. Not a light showed anywhere; and to make
things worse the moon had abandoned us. For one good hour we swept
through chaos to the tuneless lamentations of Sheepshanks, who declared
that his collar-bone was broken.

Then Dalmahoy flung a hand upwards. 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