Then Mrs. Gudrun screamed, and Bobby Bolsover, casting his goggles to the winds, huddled in the bottom of his basket, and the debilitated but plucky nobleman shut his eyes and thought of his long-dead mother as the airship hurtled downwards ... crash into the top of the tallest of the giant oaks in the magnificent park of H.S.H. Prince Gogonof Babouine.
The Prince has the reputation of being excessively hospitable. When the three passengers recovered from the shaking, the top of a long ladder pierced the thick foliage beneath the wrecked vessel, and the Prince’s major-domo, a stout personage in black with a gold chain, came climbing up with a courteous message from the Prince. Would Madame and M. le Duc and the other gentleman descend and partake of the second déjeuner, which was on the point of being served, or would they prefer to remain on board their vessel?
“Stop up here? Does the man take us for angels?” snorted Mrs. Gudrun indignantly.
The descent was not without danger, but with the aid of De Petoburgh and the major-domo, she braved and completed it without injury either to her long celebrated limbs or her famous features. Bobby followed.
The Prince entertained the shipwrecked castaways in princely fashion, and drove the party back to Paris on his drag, the wonderful yellow coach with the team of curly Orloffs. And he consented to dine; and that night Mrs. Gudrun held a reception behind the illuminated balconies of the Hotel Fritz, while the London newsboys were yelling her familiar name, and the evening papers containing the most ornamental particulars of her adventure went off like hot cakes.
According to the most reliable account garnered by our special correspondent from the lovely lips of the exquisite aëronaut, she had never quailed in the moment of peril, and, indeed, upon the distinguished authority of the Hon. R. Bolsover: “One is never frightened while one can rely upon one’s own pluck!” Nobody interviewed De Petoburgh, leaning vacuously smiling against the wall. Indeed, he had developed another of his attacks, and could not have responded with any coherence.
“Wonderful fellow, Bolsover,” Teddy Candelish gushed, Teddy, all smile and sparkle, “so brainy and resourceful!”
“Rath’ ...” assented De Petoburgh fragmentarily.
“And Her Nibs—a heroine—positively a heroine!”
“Ra’!” assented De Petoburgh, as the heroine swept by, making magnificent eyes at the palpably enamored Prince, while Paris murmured indiscreet admiration.