Perhaps the super-acute imaginations of the spirit audience surpassed sight. Perhaps they actually saw an evil face lean to the ear of the mortal and heard the voice of the millionaire’s own of the personal devils that improve such moments to incite the worst in everyman.
John’s attempt to deny the disputation of fear and selfishness, although brief in point of time, was intense. While still in the throes he saw that another had noted Catherine’s double protection.
The Marquis d’Elie, abandoned by his guards, was rushing toward her, his object plain. His jaw hung lax as he reached and importuned her. His knees near failed him in the struggle to take the parachute by force.
And Catherine? With all her strength she fought off the abject beggar who so recently had played the nobleman. Yet when, as almost he had conquered her, she saw her husband bearing down upon them, a retroactive impulse controlled her. So John, too, was after the saving suit? If she must give up the second chance of life, which she had meant to hold in reserve, it should not be to John!
When the banker engaged d’Elie, she allied herself with the defense. No breath of the ignited helium was more fiery than the invective she spat at him who so long had supplied her with the luxuries of life.
When she saw that his strength was likely to worst the two of them, she suddenly drew out of the struggle and herself unfastened the contested parachute. As d’Elie was flung aside, she flung it to him. Turning swiftly, she then threw herself upon her husband and begged that he assist her into the overloaded baby-blimp, about to be cut away. Herself safe, she saw his attempt to follow forcibly prevented by the pilot and shrieked with mirthless spite. It would seem that in this hour when all loves were crowded out save that of self, hate was well remembered.
“Now watch the Cabot coward!”
His Majesty’s sharp suggestion stabbed the spirit-girl’s heart. She tried to turn from a sadder sight than the air craft’s consumption—the burning to ashes of her fondest ideal. Yet she might not turn; might not close her eyes. A control stronger than her own aversion was upon her. In trying not to look, she realized that she must look until the end.
The loudening laughter of the vast audience deadened her consciousness; seemed to be at her, rather than the spectacle that so diverted them. She sought to fortify herself. What though John did turn coward? The flesh was heir to the fear of death. At each apologetic thought, the mirth of the helliot crowd crackled louder. What could be happening on the doomed craft so to delight them? With a dread for the spiritual debasement of her loved one of Earth greater than had been her own dread of physical death, she looked and looked.
The baby-blimp of last resource was lowering toward the doubtful safety of the surface of the sea. The pilot stood on the bridge, idle for the first time since the gas-bag had been struck. Evidently he expected to go down with his ship as had so many captains before him. John Cabot clung to the deck rail as if contemplating a suicidal plunge. Forward, the Marquis d’Elie stood equipped with the parachute suit won by Catherine’s trick, but a lack of trust in it seemed to restrain him from the life-leap.