‘By time!’ cried the Grizzly, losing patience for once. ‘I can’t onderstand ye, Luce. One moment ye’re as limp ez a lump er jelly, and the next ye’re ez stiff ez the rammer er a gun. Oh, ef I’d on’y kept Jake Summers’s knife!’
‘Haul them down!’ shouted the colonel, grinning like an ugly imp.
He was standing immediately underneath the car, looking up at the boys. A wild storm of rage shook Ephraim from head to foot, and desisting from his useless struggle with the knot, he stooped to the bottom of the car, and raising the one heavy bag of ballast that remained, sent it with unerring aim full down upon his mocking enemy.
The sand-bag struck the colonel between the neck and shoulder, and felled him like a log; but as he measured his length upon the ground, the car sank to earth; strong hands seized and held it fast, and the young captain, who had been looking on in bewilderment at the singular scene, stepped forward, and parting the ropes, ordered the boys, not unkindly, to get out.
‘Whatever does this mean?’ he began. ‘Are you Federal soldiers, or’——But Colonel Spriggs, rising from the ground, advanced with a face that was absolutely contorted with rage.
‘Hold your tongue, sir!’ he shouted rudely to the captain. ‘I don’t know who you are, nor what you want here.—As for you, you scoundrel,’ he foamed at Ephraim. ‘You filthy rebel, you; I’ll teach you! You’ve played your last prank.’ Then, maddened by the quiet smile upon the Grizzly’s face, he raised his arm and thrust his fist, guarded by the heavy hilt of his sword, violently in the lad’s mouth.
‘Take that, you dog,’ he cried. ‘What do you mean by grinning at me?’
Lucius uttered a cry of rage, and struggled violently with the men who held him on either side; but Ephraim, spitting out a mouthful of blood, coolly replied: ‘’Twould hev made a cat laugh ter see ye sprawlin’ thar. I on’y wish it had broken yer neck, ye or’nery skunk.’
‘Colonel!’ exclaimed the young captain, stepping to the front. Then, seeing that his superior was temporarily out of his senses with wrath, and fearful of some dire catastrophe, he turned sharply upon the crowd of soldiers, and ordered them to fall in.
The men, drilled to prompt obedience, obeyed at once; even those who were holding the balloon loosing their grasp and joining their comrades, the colonel’s men in one group, the captain’s in another. Instantly the balloon rose in the air, and the grapnel having been freed in the commotion, soared higher and higher, till at last, caught by a current of wind, it floated over the tree tops towards the south. An hour later it astonished Jackson’s rearguard by descending suddenly among them, a collapsed and miserable wreck.