“I withdraw my promise now this moment,” said the journalist, climbing carefully into the car. “Everything that you say henceforward will be printed. We shall have quite an exciting trip. We may even get to France. Anyhow, I shall have a clinking column for Monday’s Herald. You evidently hadn’t quite appreciated what the new journalism is.”
Then there was silence in the mounting balloon.
Ilam bent his malevolent eyes longingly upon the disappearing scene below. The glory of the sunshine was nothing to him. He wanted to be in the advertisement department, arranging future contracts for spaces on the programmes. He reflected that it was another of the mad caprices of Carpentaria that had got him into this grotesque scrape. And he was so angry that he forgot even to think of the danger to which he was exposed.
“So here we are!” said the journalist. “And you can’t do anything!”
CHAPTER III—Inspiration
Permit me to say, Mr. Smithers,” Carpentaria remarked at last, “that your knavery is futile. The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted. We are, in fact, already descending.”
He held tightly in his hand the end of a rope, which reached up high above them and was lost in the mass of cordage. He had opened the valve to its widest.
“Don’t venture to move,” he added, “or Mr. Ilam will break your head for you. This affair will cost us nothing but a few thousand cubic feet of gas at a half-a-crown a thousand. What it will cost you, I shall have to consider.”