Snap took the offered pipe and enjoyed the first few whiffs immensely, but, as he remarked, 'almost at once struck ile.'
'Thank you, Dick, kindly,' he said, handing the pipe back hurriedly, 'but I think my jaw will work without oiling. I'd rather read and see you smoke.'
Dick laughed and resumed his pipe, while Snap read as follows:
'"Sunday, 15.—Thank God, I have still an arm left to write. It is I who am in fault. The balloon was by me too suddenly stopped, and I was at once outthrown, and my leg and arm altogether broken——"
'Then there is a stop, as if the pen had fallen from his hand,' said Snap.
'Fainted from pain, I guess,' said Dick, taking his pipe out of his mouth and blowing away a lot of little rings of smoke.
This was a favourite trick of Dick's, and you might see him often send three rings one through the other in succession.
'The next entry is the 17th, and it is a long one,' continued the reader. '"I know right well," he writes, "that I cannot much longer stay. The end must soon come. Ach Gott! how it will good be. Now hear I, day and night, the roaring of the winds of heaven, like the beating of surf on the shore. If it were not that my limbs were so heavy with pain, these winds would snatch me from my hard couch and give me back to my native earth and peace. Ah me! how the clouds spin, and the peak keeps bending, bending—— I have had no food since my fall and die of hunger and weakness. God grant I die before that foul black bird, which comes croaking nearer and nearer, tears my eyes out! But I think death is very near now, the pain is gone, and I can think clearly. I have one work to do, and then I die peacefully. Some man may find me—when, God knows; who he will be, He too knows—but, as He has put a thing into my mind, I would leave it to my brother men. It is this. In the small box, A, in the car of the balloon, is a paper. This paper contains a design for steering balloons. All my life I have sought this, now have I found it—too late. Henceforth the air shall be as navigable as the sea or the dry land. But I would have this design patented and to bear my name. So much earthly ambition clings to me still. Take, then, thou, who mayest find these bones, this box, A, to Professor von Bulberg of Berlin. There it shall be patented in my name. I would have the honour; and for your service, since I have no kin, I leave you as reward whatever I may die possessed of, here or in Potsdam: here, a few priceless instruments; there, a little house or two, I think, and, should there be any, half the proceeds of this my invention; the other half to go to the Royal Society of Aeronauts, Berlin."
'By Jove!' said Snap at this point, 'it is just as well that he had no more to write; if he had, I could not have read it, although his shaky hand is very sharp and clear; but it is shaky towards the end—just look at it,' and he passed it to Frank.
'What luck it is that you took up German instead of Greek, Snap!' said Frank.