Each boy sawed away at the ropes near him with a will, but old Dick did not get his rope cut through quite as soon as the others. The result was that the balloon gave a furious plunge, and then, as the last rope broke, righted herself and darted upwards once more.
Snap looked white and scared, but the colour came back to his face when he saw all his comrades in their places, and old Wharton chimed in with:
'Dang me if this here balloon hasn't got all the vices of a cayuse, and more. Loses its wind and wants to stop, leastways come down, and then, as for bucking, a half-broke cayuse is a fool to it!'
For a while the balloon sailed along on a higher level, but all the time the thin wreath of white vapour marked a leak and a constant escape of gas. Besides this, the evening damp collected and settled on the envelope of the balloon, and all tended to weigh it down.
'We are sinking again,' cried Towzer, 'sinking faster than ever before. Look how the prairie is rushing up to meet us!' and indeed it seemed so, and there was absolutely nothing left to throw out.
'Wal, you may as well go too,' said Dick with a sigh, and he drew his revolver from his breast and dropped this his most precious possession to the earth.
The boys looked at it as it shot downwards swift and straight, swifter and straighter than a skylark falls, and they thought of what might any moment be their own lot, and it made the boldest of them grip the ropes with fresh energy.
'Dick,' said Snap, 'in another five minutes at most we shall drop right among the Crows. They are so still now that one might fancy no one was in camp, but there are the fires, and I can even in this gloom make out the tops of the teepees. I wish something would break the silence to tell us how far we are from the ground.'
'Yes, pard,' replied Dick, 'one can't see much through this mist.'
'If there was not such a crowd of them waiting for us,' said Frank, 'this fog might give us our best chance of escape.'