"My God," said Rutherford, "the cable has broken!"
In an instant I was craning over the side of the basket. Five hundred
feet, 700 feet, 1000 feet, 2000 feet below us, the cruiser that had been
our only link with the world of man was diminishing so swiftly that, as
far as I remember, she had shrunk to the smallness of a tug and then
vanished into the haze before I even answered him.
"Anything to be done?" I asked.
"Nothing," said he. It had been growing steadily more misty even down near the water, and now
as the released balloon shot up into an altitude of five, ten, and
presently twelve thousand feet, everything in Heaven and earth
disappeared except that white and clammy fog. By a simultaneous impulse
he lit a cigarette and I a pipe, and I remember very plainly wondering
whether he felt any touch of that self-conscious defiance of fate and
deliberate intention to do the coolest thing possible, which I am free to
confess I felt myself. Probably not; Rutherford was the real Navy and I
but a zig-zag ringed R.N.V.R. amateur. Still, the spirit of the Navy is
infectious and I made a fair attempt to keep his stout heart company.
"What _ought_ to happen to a thing like this?" I enquired.
"If this wind holds we might conceivably make a landing somewhere--with
extraordinary luck."