"This is splendid," said the captain. "We'll be across in half an hour. We'll catch the train for Paris, and you shall dance at the Closerie to-night."
Josiah didn't dance, and didn't know what the Closerie might be. But he was not without susceptibility to the allurement of a quiet dinner in Paris, and began to feel the exhilaration of having accomplished a perilous feat, to which he would certainly drag in some reference in his great work. It would be difficult, as he was as far as possible remote from Underground England. But it might be worked in some antithetical sentence.
After they had sailed for the space of ten minutes the captain, who had been throwing out bits of paper which they left far behind, suddenly said a bad word.
"We are becalmed," he continued, and truly the bits of paper flung out floated idly round the balloon. "We must get out of this."
He cast out the ballast, bag after bag, and higher still they soared. Nevertheless, whenever they flung out the bits of paper, they floated here and there, some dropping back into the car.
"There goes our last bag of ballast," said the captain, "and may luck go with it. We are lost men unless it takes us into another current, which let us hope won't be coming from the East and carry us out into the Atlantic."
Up again they mounted, how many feet Josiah didn't know, but he was sensible of a sudden iciness in the atmosphere, a tingling of the blood at his finger ends, and a strong disposition to bleed at the nose. The captain threw out some more bits of paper. Still they circled round and round, dropping into the car or falling to the distant earth now utterly out of sight. They had passed through the cloud, and had above them a chilly sun and an intensely blue sky. Below them were the clouds, on one of which was clearly caught the shadow of the balloon. Josiah, when he moved his head, could see an answering motion on the cloud, and recognised the reflection of the captain's figure, sitting stern and erect, with his teeth set and a look of angry determination on his brow.
This frightened Josiah a great deal more than the captain's words. He felt that they were lost in space, and that the end must speedily come. This terrible look on the captain's face made him sick at heart.
"Mr. Smith," said the captain, speaking scarcely above a whisper, but his voice sounded as if he were shouting from the housetops, "you told me you were not a married man."
"Yes," said Josiah, "I have never been married."