Pride and His Prisoners

by A. L. O. E.

Down—down—down—yet with more rapid and breathless descent, not in perpendicular fall, but borne sideways by the freshening sea breeze, sank the once towering Eaglet. The white crests of the billows could now be distinguished, and even the fin of a porpoise that flashed in the sunbeam.

“Might not the car float?” exclaimed Mabel; “it is so buoyant and light!”

“It possibly might for a time,” replied Augustine, “were it not attached to this frightful incumbrance. Dashleigh,” he asked suddenly, “have you a knife? I parted yesterday with mine.”

“For what use?” inquired the earl, as he gave a large one which he happened to have on his person.

There is no time for reply, the Eaglet is nearing the sea; down—down—down—till with a violent shock which splashes the spray many feet into the air, the car strikes the waves and rebounds again, its dripping, gasping occupants clinging hard to prevent themselves from being flung out into the sea.

Down again—still with terrific violence; it is a frightful scene! The spirit of a demon appears to animate the balloon,—a spirit that delights in torturing its miserable victims, as it goes sweeping, dashing, whirling on, now skimming at some height above the surface of the waters, now suddenly dipping so low that the half uttered shriek of Mabel is stifled in the gasping sob of suffocation! No wretch fastened to a wild horse plunging, rearing, bounding on its way, with steaming nostril and foaming breath, ever endured the horrors of those dragged onward by that terrific engine of death, while the half submerged car leaves a long white bubbling track on the ocean!

Augustine alone loses not his presence of mind in this crisis of unutterable horror. Though the violent, plunging, unsteady motion of the partly exhausted balloon makes it difficult for his half drowned companions to keep their seats, he manages to retain his footing without clinging, for both his hands are engaged in a desperate effort to cut asunder the cords of the balloon. It is their only chance of life,—a miserable chance indeed, but better even to sink at once in the watery depths, than to be thus given again and again a horrible taste of death, to be snatched away from it for a moment, only to be precipitated downwards once more! With the energy of despair the drowning man wields the flashing knife, one after another the ropes are cut, each that gives way rendering more fearful the danger of the party—for at length the horizontal position of the car is actually reversed, the wicker is suspended by a single cord, and it is only by clasping and clinging with strained muscles and desperate grasp, that the terrified ones can retain hold of this, the one frail barrier between themselves and destruction!

Augustine awaits the moment when the lower end of the car just touches the waves, and then the last cord is severed! In an instant the light frame is dashed on the billows, the waves splashing around and over it and the three who almost miraculously have retained their places within it. The car of wicker work lined with oil-skin is not ill calculated on an emergency to act the part of a boat, but it is nearly full of water, and it is only by almost superhuman efforts in baling out the brine with Mabel’s straw hat and Dashleigh’s beaver (Augustine’s is floating far on the waves) that the little shell can be kept afloat.

In the meantime the balloon, released from the weight of the car, bursts upwards like a bird of prey soaring from a field of blood; or, to repeat my former figure, as if the demon of pride, baffled and wounded like Apollyon in his conflict with Christian, had “spread his dark wings on the blast, and fled away to his own habitation!” A wild sensation of joy, even in the midst of her terror, flashed across the mind of Mabel, as she saw that terrible minister of destruction borne far away—and for ever!

Perilous as was the situation of the voyagers in their fragile boat, drenched as they were with salt water, hungry, exhausted, their throats and lips parched with burning thirst, they seemed but to have exchanged one form of misery for another. And yet the change from their late frightful position brought with it some sense of relief. They were touching, though not solid earth, yet some portion of their native sphere; they were no longer floating in an ocean of air, cut off by an impassable gulf from the faintest hope of human assistance. There was comfort in the sight of the lank brown sea-weed borne on the floating waves, comfort in the sight of the white winged birds that dipped in the flashing brine!