Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1919
I In the Clouds
II The Man on the Shore
III Alone Again
IV The Suspicious Stranger
V The Doctor's House
VI A Petticoat
VII At the Mansion House
VIII Sunday
IX An Ally
X The Coast Patrol
XI A Near Thing
XII The Key Turned
XIII On the Drifter
XIV My Cousin's Letter
I An Idea
II A Little Dinner
III The Alcoholic Patient
IV The Test
V Waiting
VI The Spectacled Man
VII A Reminiscence
VIII H.M.S. Uruguay
IX Bolton on the Track
X Where the Clue Led
XI An Eye-Opener
XII The Confidant
XIII Jean's Guesses
XIV The Pocket Book
XV Part of the Truth
XVI Tracked Down
XVII The Rest of the Truth
XVIII The Frosty Road
XIX Our Morning Call
"My God," said Rutherford, "the cable has broken!"
In an instant I was craning over the side of the basket. Five hundredfeet, 700 feet, 1000 feet, 2000 feet below us, the cruiser that had beenour only link with the world of man was diminishing so swiftly that, asfar as I remember, she had shrunk to the smallness of a tug and thenvanished into the haze before I even answered him.
"Anything to be done?" I asked.
"Nothing," said he.
It had been growing steadily more misty even down near the water, and nowas the released balloon shot up into an altitude of five, ten, andpresently twelve thousand feet, everything in Heaven and earthdisappeared except that white and clammy fog. By a simultaneous impulsehe lit a cigarette and I a pipe, and I remember very plainly wonderingwhether he felt any touch of that self-conscious defiance of fate anddeliberate intention to do the coolest thing possible, which I am free toconfess I felt myself. Probably not; Rutherford was the real Navy and Ibut a zig-zag ringed R.N.V.R. amateur. Still, the spirit of the Navy isinfectious and I made a fair attempt to keep his stout heart company.
"What ought to happen to a thing like this?" I enquired.
"If this wind holds we might conceivably make a landing somewhere—withextraordinary luck."
"On the other side?"
He nodded and I reflected.
It was towards the end of August, 1914. We were somewhere ab