The renegade nodded. "I had time on my hands," he muttered, "and—and interested myself in their private matters. I meant to have made a good thing of it in Pekin."
"I see," said Fred, looking at his companion with unmitigated disgust. "At your old tricks, of course. I'm not sure that I wouldn't have started without you, if I had known."
"Then it's fortunate for me that you didn't," said the spy, with a sardonic grin. "Don't let's quarrel, Larkin. You've saved my life, and I won't forget it. It was a shabby trick I played you, in Port Arthur, but I really didn't mean you any harm. All I wanted was time to get out of the city."
"All right," said Fred lightly. "I'm not a man to hold a grudge; but I wouldn't try any more tricks of the sort, my lad. They get tiresome, after a while. Look here, I'm hungry, and we haven't investigated the commissary department of the balloon corps. Here goes!"
Dipping into a pile of packages at the bottom of the car, he brought up several cans of condensed beef and some hard biscuit, which had evidently been abandoned in the hurried flight from Liaoyang. There were also a couple of bottles of vodka, or Russian whiskey, upon which Stevens seized eagerly. Larkin, however, wrested them from his grasp and threw them overboard.
"I hope they won't do any damage when they strike," he said, "but they certainly won't do any in this ship, while I'm captain. No vodka for you, my friend. What's this—Limonade gazenze—ah, that fills the bill! Bottled lemonade, straight from Paris—two pints for each of us. Have some?" And he opened a can of beef and passed over a bottle of lemonade.
Stevens scowled, but accepted the situation, and the two made a hearty breakfast.
They had just flung over the empty can and bottles when they heard the report of a musket.
"I don't like it!" shouted Fred, springing up so quickly that the basket rocked, and the spy turned pale again. "While we were eating we've been dropping, I'm sure I don't know why, unless there's a rip somewhere aloft. We aren't more than a thousand yards up, and they're taking pot shots at us from a Jap encampment. Out goes some more ballast!"