"Isn't it just too awfully lovely for anything," said Frank. "I say, you know, Conal, I'm a sort of sorry I didn't bring my fiddle."
"It's a fine sensation," said Conal. "It must be just like going to heaven."
"Yes"--from Duncan--"but we should have somebody to meet us when we got on shore there. But we don't know where this aërial tour may end."
"Well, we're going high enough anyhow," said Frank. "And," he added, "I'm not half so funky as I thought I'd be. I've often thought, mind you, that I'd like the going up in a balloon, 'cause there is plenty of sky-room, and nothing to knock your head against. It was the thoughts of alighting on earth again that always had terrors for me, hitting against poplar-trees and steeples and such, or spiked on the weather-cock of a town-hall and left to kick. But this is glorious, and I suppose we'll get down all straight."
Duncan held down his hand to Viking, and the honest dog licked it with his soft tongue.
"It is so good of you to take me, master," he seemed to say. "I don't know where in all the world you're off to, but you're here, and that's good enough for old Vike."
"I say, Duncan," said Conal, "aren't we taking an easterly direction?"
Duncan was rated "captain of the car", so all questions were referred to him.
"It really looks a little like it," was the reply, "unless the island down yonder, with our dear friends on it, has broken adrift, and is bound for the mainland."
They could talk lightly, almost joyously now, so bracing was the air, and so delicious the sensation of floating through space.