'I took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and I worked her up to full power. My Renzalaer's no ventilation-fan to pull against. But I climbed out just in time. I'd hitched the signallin' lamp to her tail so's we could track her. Otherwise, with my Rush Silencer, we might's well have shooed an owl out of a barn. She left just that way when we let her go. No sound except the propellers--Whoo-oo-oo! Whoo-oo-oo! There was a dip in the ground ahead. It hid her lamp for a second--but there's no such thing as time in real life. Then that lamp travelled up the far slope slow--too slow. Then it kinder lifted, we judged. Then it sure was liftin'. Then it lifted good. D'you know why? Our four naked perspirin' souls was out there underneath her, hikin' her heavens high. Yes, sir. We did it!... And that lamp kept liftin' and liftin'. Then she side-slipped! My God, she side-slipped twice, which was what I'd been afraid of all along! Then she straightened up, and went away climbin' to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got smaller and smaller till we couldn't track it any more. Then we breathed. We hadn't breathed any since their arrival, but we didn't know it till we breathed that time--all together. Then we dug our finger-nails out of our palms an' came alive again--in instalments.
'Lundie spoke first. "We therefore commit their bodies to the air," he says, an' puts his cap on.
'"The deep--the deep," says Walen. "It's just twenty-three miles to the Channel."
'"Poor chaps! Poor chaps!" says Mankeltow. "We'd have had 'em to dinner if they hadn't lost their heads. I can't tell you how this distresses me, Laughton."
'"Well, look at here, Arthur," I says. "It's only God's Own Mercy you an' me ain't lyin' in Flora's Temple now, and if that fat man had known enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin', Lord Lundie and Walen would have been alongside us."
'"I see that," he says. "But we're alive and they're dead, don't ye know."
'"I know it," I says. "That's where the dead are always so damned unfair on the survivors."
'"I see that too," he says. "But I'd have given a good deal if it hadn't happened, poor chaps!"
'"Amen!" says Lundie. Then? Oh, then we sorter walked back two an' two to Flora's Temple an' lit matches to see we hadn't left anything behind. Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it--he never touched the trigger--an', bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off--spiteful as a rattler!
'"Look out! They'll have one of us yet," says Walen in the dark. But they didn't--the Lord hadn't quit being our shepherd--and we heard the bullet zip across the veldt--quite like old times. Ya-as!