up towards us.

The sunlight through which we were falling had not touched it yet. It
leaped on us, drenched in shadow, like some incalculable beast from its
covert: a land shaggy with woods and coppices. Between the woods a
desolate river glimmered. A colony of herons rose from the tree-tops
beneath us and flew squawking for the farther shore.

"This won't do," said Byfield, and shut the escape. "We must win clear
of these woods. Hullo!" Ahead of us the river widened abruptly into a
shining estuary, populous with anchored shipping. Tall hills flanked it,
and in the curve of the westernmost hill a grey town rose from the
waterside: its terraces climbing, tier upon tier, like seats in an
amphitheatre; its chimneys lifting their smoke over against the dawn.
The tiers curved away southward to a round castle and a spit of rock,
off which a brig under white canvas stood out for the line of the open
sea.

We swept across the roadstead towards the town, trailing our grapnel as
it were a hooked fish, a bare hundred feet above the water. Faces stared
up at us from the ships' decks. The crew of one lowered a boat to
pursue; we were half a mile away before it touched the water. Should we
clear the town? At Byfield's orders we stripped off our overcoats and
stood ready to lighten ship; but seeing that the deflected wind in the
estuary was carrying us towards the suburbs and the harbour's mouth, he
changed his mind.

"It is devil or deep sea," he announced. "We will try the grapnel. Look
to it, Ducie, while I take the valve!" He pressed a clasp-knife into my
hand. "Cut, if I give the word."

We descended a few feet. We were skimming the ridge. The grapnel
touched, and, in the time it takes you to wink, had ploughed through a
kitchen garden, uprooting a regiment of currant bushes; had leaped clear
and was caught in the eaves of a wooden outhouse, fetching us up with a
dislocating shock. I heard a rending noise, and picked myself up in time
to see the building collapse like a house of cards, and a pair of
demented pigs emerge from the ruins and plunge across the garden-beds.
And with that I was pitched off my feet again as the hook caught in an
iron _chevaux-de-frise_, and held fast.

"Hold tight!" shouted Byfield, as the car lurched and struggled,
careering desperately. "Don't cut, man! What the devil!"

Our rope had tautened over the coping of a high stone wall; and the
straining _Lunardi_--a very large and handsome blossom,