"Pauline! Pauline! It's I—Harry. Can't you hear me? Pauline!"
There came no sound in answer—only the creaking of the balloon rope in the air, the rasping of the anchor fluke upon the stone.
He sprang up and back to the motor and began throwing out the robes, blankets, tools and chains. He laid a blanket on the ground and began to slash it into strips with his pocket knife. In the ends of the strips he cut slits and linked the slits with the chains to form a rope. He paused only once in his frantic labor. That was when he rushed back to the edge of the cliff to look again and call again-in vain. He fastened the chain at the end of his strange line to a sapling growing some ten feet back of the verge and with a throb of relief saw the other end drop to within a few feet of the unconscious girl. He tested the strength of the cable by pulling on it with all his might. It did not give. He put himself over the cliff side and began the descent.
Owen and Hicks had not only lost the balloon, but had lost Harry, too. They could follow him only by the deep cut tracks of his flying car, and these were as likely to be over marshes and fields as on the highway.
More than once Hicks urged that they turn back.
"We can't do no good," he argued. "If they ain't dead they ain't— that's all."
"I've got to be sure," muttered Owen.
The little runabout had a hard fight to climb the cliff that Harry's big car had taken so easily. But as they came through the grove into view of the balloon and the empty basket the two felt amply rewarded for their worry and trouble and toil.
"By George, it has happened. It's done!" cried Owen. No artist gazing on a finished masterpiece, no conqueror thanking the fates for victory could have spoken with more triumphant fervor.
But Hicks was out of the machine and running to Harry's car. He saw the shreds of the blankets; he saw the knife; finally he caught a glimpse of the chain that was fastened to the sapling.