A rather rapid drop was then made, Harry Goodall having calculated that he would break through the mist at about a mile, more or less, to the east of the lugger, when the breeze off the French coast would facilitate his project.
“Smothereens!” cried Warner, “but we’re in the fog now, and no mistake.”
“Silence, there,” enjoined Harry Goodall, in hushed but decisive tones. “Be ready with the sand.”
A few moments of perfect quiet ensued, then came the word of command.
“Let go your drag, Tom.”
“Out it is, sir, and has struck the water. Ah! she’s checked now.”
“Yes, that’s all right,” whispered the aeronaut, “but we want just a little more ballast overboard, or we may touch the waves. You see we have to get a proper equilibrium, Warner, between our ascensional power and the drag of our water anchor. And now,” said Harry Goodall, with bated breath, “it is a case of hit or miss. Keep perfectly still, for we must listen for their voices.”
For some time the party careered along at about a hundred feet above the waves, which had become less rough, so that the balloon was comparatively steady, though their motion could be felt as the drag rose and dipped in the water.
“We can’t see far ahead,” said Warner, in an undertone.
“No, we shall have to be guided by sound, and the less we say, Simon, the more we may hear,” replied Goodall to the detective, whose conversational powers were difficult to restrain.