Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/405

 down; too late: faint. Sheepshanks wants ring for 'shistance: pulls string: breaks. When the string breaks Lunardi won't fall—tha's the devil of it."

"With my tol-de-rol," Mr. Sheepshanks murmured. "Pretty—very pretty."

I cast a look aloft. The Lunardi was transformed: every inch of it frosted as with silver. All the ropes and cords ran with silver too, or liquid mercury. And in the midst of this sparkling cage, a little below the hoop, and five feet at least above reach, dangled the broken valve-string.

"Well," I said, "you have made a handsome mess of it. Pass me the broken end, and be good enough not to lose your head."

"I wish I could," he groaned, pressing it between his palms. "My dear sir, I'm not frightened, if that is your meaning."

I was, and horribly. But the thing had to be done. The reader will perhaps forgive me for touching shyly on the next two or three minutes, which still recur on the smallest provocation and play bogey with my dreams. To balance on the edge of night, quaking, gripping a frozen rope; to climb and feel the pit of one's stomach slipping like a bucket in a fathomless well—I suppose the intolerable pains in my head spurred me to the attempt—these and the urgent shortness of my breathing—much as a toothache will drive a man up to the dentist's chair. I knotted the broken ends of the valve-string and slid back into the car: then tugged the valve open, while with my disengaged arm I wiped the sweat from my forehead. It froze upon the coat-cuff.

In a minute or so the drumming in my ears grew less violent. Dalmahoy bent over the aëronaut, who was bleeding at the nose, and now began to breathe stertorously. Sheepshanks had fallen into placid slumber. I kept the