“That,” said Felix slowly, “will be taking a long chance.”
“Whole thing’s a chance.” Johnny was tying a loop in the rope. “Now I’ll put a foot in this loop, hold to the rope with one hand and work with the other. Flashlight will tell me all I need to know. Can hold the light in my teeth.”
“You should be in a circus.” Felix laughed. For all that, he made the other end of the rope fast, then prepared to lower his companion.
As he climbed up and over, Johnny felt his heart miss a beat. It was strange, this crawling out into space. All was dark below. Was the water a hundred or a thousand feet down? He could not tell. The majestic Lindbergh light swept the sky, but its rays did not touch them.
“If only it did,” he murmured, “someone would see us.”
Strangely enough, at this very moment the professor’s golden-haired daughter, Beth, was making strenuous efforts to bring that very thing to pass, to get one of those eyes of the night, a powerful searchlight, focussed upon the runaway balloon.
Her father, sensing that something had gone wrong with the balloon, had hurried her away to the spot from which the balloon had risen. Arrived there after a wild taxi ride, she had discovered on the instant what had happened.
“Some—someone cut the cable with an electric torch!” In vain her eyes searched the sky for the balloon. She was about to hurry away when a hand gripped her arm.
“Where would you go?”
“Why! I—”