“Here, the captain sent you this revolver. You may need it to defend yourself, not that I care a cent. And now look sharp, we are coming over Park Lane in a minute.” Norris pointed to the trap-hole, and I saw swinging at the side a long rope-ladder.
“What, climb down that?”
“Yes, if you want to go. There’s no other take-off good enough. Come, yes or no, we shall be spinning across the Park before you’ve done thinking.”
“But the parachute?”
“There it is in the corner. It is a case of clinging on with your hands. We will lower it to you, and at the word ‘Go,’ drop it. The only risk is trees and the cursed vermin underneath. Will you go?”
There was no help for it. I clenched my teeth savagely, and backed kneeling on to the edge of the trap-hole, grasping the bomb-tube with my left hand to steady myself. Schwartz and another man got ready the parachute and thrust its stem down the opening. It was lucky the Attila did not pitch, for these tactics might have proved my death-warrant. As it was, I succeeded in working my toes into the top, and thence into the lower rungs of the ladder. Having thus worked my way down I looked for the parachute, and transferred my left hand from the tube to the trap-edge. Slowly I climbed down; the oscillations of the ladder were startling, and feeling for the rungs was a purgatory. At last I was clear of the well, and under the bottom of the aëronef hanging in a clear space between the huge wheels which studded it. “Now’s your time!” yelled Norris, and I grabbed the rope-handles of the parachute fiercely—now with my right hand, then, as the ladder threatened to run away from under me, with my left. One look below—we were full over the Park, five hundred feet or so from the turf.
HOW I LEFT THE ATTILA.
“Let go!” I shouted, and flung my legs from the ladder on which they were resting obliquely. For a second and a half my heart seemed to leap into my mouth, for I fell as falls a spent rocket. Then with a welcome tug on me, the parachute bellied out, and fear gave place to confidence, nay, to exhilaration.
What a spectacle! Above me fled the Attila like some evil bird of night; north, west, south, east rose the crimson hues of the smoke-wreaths; below I heard the clamours of the populace, and saw the darker tree-tops stand out against the dark face of the Park. The wind blowing strongly I was borne south near a patch of trees, and had reason to fear for the moment that a nasty mishap was imminent. Happily fortune favoured me, and gliding oilily and without shock to the ground, I made off rapidly in the direction of Bayswater.