“How—how remarkable!” she breathed.
“It’s the umbrella,” some one at her side volunteered. “It’s made for that purpose, like a parachute.”
She did not give the information that, as far as she could tell, the man had entertained no notion of making that unusual journey.
She continued to watch while the Chinaman plunged downward. With his fall checked by the umbrella, he had, she believed, a fair chance for a safe landing.
“And then?” Some spirit inside her appeared to ask the question. “Why, then,” she answered the spirit, “I’ll be after him!”
The Chinaman disappeared into shadows that lay above the surface of the lagoon.
At once spotlights were playing upon the water. If he came to the surface no one saw him.
“But then,” Florence assured herself, “there are a hundred boats out there on the lagoon. A man with such a trick as that in his bag must have others. He need only come up alongside a boat, cling there until the excitement is over, then go on his way. We shall meet again.
“But not to-night,” she amended, as she surveyed the dense throng below.
“So here’s for a sky ride!”