Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/118

 needless to recount it now. Many times I thought that both men must lose their lives, and I should finish this awful voyage alone. But in the end I had my arms around Phillip's neck once more, and was thanking God for giving him back to me.

I don't think I half expressed my gratitude to poor Kenneth, who had so bravely and generously helped to save him. I wish I had said more when I look back at that time now. But my love for Phillip made me blind to everything.

Phillip was very much done up, and greatly dissatisfied with the result of his exertions; but he soon began to make the best of things, as he always did.

"I'm a selfish duffer, Minnie," said he. "All the good I've done by frightening you like this is to get myself splendidly warm."

"What, have you done nothing to the valve?"

"Didn't have time. No, Moore and I must try to get at it from below, though from what I saw before I started to go aloft, it seemed impossible."

"But we are descending."

"Eh?"

"Descending rapidly. See how fast we are diving into that cloud below!"

"It's true! We're dropping. What can it mean?"

As he spoke we were immersed in a dense white mist, which wetted us through as if we had been plunged in water. Then suddenly the car was filled with whirling snow—thick masses of snow that covered us so that we could not see each other; choked us so that we could hardly speak or breathe.

And the cold! the cold! It cut us like knives; it beat the life out of us as if with hammers.

This sudden, overwhelming horror struck us dumb. We could only cling together and pray. It was plain that there must be a rent in the silk, a large one, caused probably by the climbing of the men, a rent that might widen at any moment and reduce the balloon to ribbons.

We were being dashed along in a wild storm of wind and snow, the headlong force of which alone delayed the fate which seemed surely to await us. Where should we fall? The world beneath us was near and palpable, yet we could not distinguish any object upon it. But we fell lower and lower, until our eyes informed us all in an instant, and we exclaimed together:—

"We are falling into the sea!" Yes, there it was beneath us, raging and leaping like a beast of prey. We should be drowned! We must be drowned! There was no hope, none!

Down we came slantwise to the water. The foam from the top of a mountain-wave scudded through the ropes of the car. Then the hurricane bore us up again on its fierce breast, and—yes, it was bearing us to the shore!

We saw the coast-line, the high, red cliffs—saw the cruel rocks at their base! Horrible! Better far to fall into the water and drown, if die we must.

The balloon flew over the rugged boulders, the snow and the foam of the sea indistinguishable around us, and made straight for the high, towering precipice.

We should dash against the jagged front! The balloon was plunging down like a maddened bull, when suddenly, within 12ft. of the rock, there was a thrilling cry from Kenneth Moore, and up we shot, almost clearing the projecting summit. Almost—not quite—sufficiently to escape death; but the car, tripping against the very verge, hurled Phillip and myself, clasped in each other's arms, far over the level snow.

We rose unhurt, to find ourselves alone.

What had become of our comrade—my childhood's playfellow, the man who had loved me so well, and whom I had cast away?

He was found later by some fishermen—a shapeless corpse upon the beach.

I stood awe-stricken in an outbuilding of a little inn that gave us shelter, whither they had borne the poor shattered body, and I wept over it as it lay there covered with the fragment of a sail.

My husband was by my side, and his voice was hushed and broken, as he said to me:—

"Minnie, I believe that, under God, our lives were saved by Kenneth Moore. Did you not hear that cry of his when we were about to crash into the face of the cliff?"

"Yes, Phillip," I answered, sobbing, "and I missed him suddenly as the balloon rose."

"You heard the words of that parting cry?"

"Yes, oh, yes! He said: A Wedding Gift! Minnie! A Wedding Gift!"

"And then?"

"He left us together."