Page:Artabanzanus (Ferrar, 1896).djvu/275

Rh see Tasmania once more before the darkness should steal upon us! Tasmania! A little, weak, insignificant spot on the face of the earth; even but a pin's point compared to the vastness of the British Empire itself; and yet it contained my little fraction of property, most of the few friends I had, and was all the world to me. There were extensive banks of clouds here and there between us and the earth still, and down into one of these we plunged, and were instantly enveloped in a dense fog.

My attention, hitherto absorbed by the earth beneath us, was now directed to the condition of the unfortunate Doctor. My alarm for him increased tenfold. He was visibly swelling to an extraordinary size. I looked at the Demon; his grape-shot eyes were fixed upon the sick passenger in a deadly stare, and while I looked he spoke.

'Obeltub, the Doctor is going to die, look at him swelling, growing bigger and bigger! I ought to have foreseen this : he will burst the balloon, and send us all to destruction! We must throw him out, and do it quickly.'

The fiendish driver grunted some unintelligible jargon. I had no time to think.

'Come on then!' shouted the Demon, and before I could interpose by even a single word, these two atrocious devils actually seized the miserable Doctor, and commenced their murderous endeavour to hurl him over the rail of the car. It was no easy task even for them, though they were as powerful as gorillas. They puffed and strained, but their victim, with all his remaining consciousness and bodily strength, resisted their efforts to the last. I was petrified with horror, and roused to a fury which I have no words to describe. What could I do to help him? Absolutely nothing. Was it possible that, after all our plotting and planning, and within sight of my happy home, I was destined to lose him in this shocking way? I bellowed and blubbered with fear and pity, and frantically seized one of his legs.