Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/390

 in the brain of a Montgolfier and a CharlesO, stop it! I'm no public speaker! How the deuce?"

There was a lurch and a heave in the crowd. "Pitch oot the drunken loon!" cried a voice. On top of it I heard my cousin bawling for a clear passage. With the tail of my eye I caught a glimpse of his plethoric perspiring face as he came charging past the barrels of the hydrogen-apparatus; and, with that, Byfield had shaken down a rope-ladder and fixed it, and I was scrambling up like a cat.

"Cut the ropes!" "Stop him!" my cousin bawled. "Stop the balloon! It's Champdivers, the murderer!"

"Cut the ropes!" vociferated Byfield; and to my infinite relief I saw that Dalmahoy was doing his best. A hand clutched at my heel. I let out viciously, amid a roar of the crowd; felt the kick reach and rattle home on somebody's teeth; and, as the crowd made a rush and the balloon swayed and shot upwards, heaved myself over the rim into the car.

Recovering myself on the instant, I bent over. I had on my tongue a neat farewell for Alain, but the sight of a hundred upturned and contorted faces silenced me as a blow might. There had lain my real peril, in the sudden wild-beast rage now suddenly baffled. I read it, as clear as print, and sickened. Nor was Alain in a posture to listen. My kick had sent Moleskin flying on top of him; and borne to earth, prone beneath the superincumbent bulk of his retainer he lay with hands outspread like a swimmer's and nose buried in the plashy soil.