Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/392

 He swung into sight again beyond the edge of the floor, and uplifted a strained, white face.

We cast loose the grapnel, lowered it and jerked it towards him. He swung past it like a pendulum, caught it with one hand and missed; came flying back on the receding curve and missed again. At the third attempt he blundered right against it, and flung an arm over one of the flukes, next a leg, and in a trice we were hauling up, hand over hand.

We dragged him inboard. He was pale but undefeatedly voluble.

"Must apologise to you fellows, really. Dam silly, clumsy kind of thing to do; might have been awkward too. Thank you, Byfield my boy, I will: two fingers only—a harmless steadier."

He took the flask and was lifting it. But his jaw dropped and his hand hung arrested.

"He's going to faint," I cried. "The strain"

"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 aëronaut's—speaking behind me and, as it were, out of the clouds,—

"I take 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, 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