CHAPTER XIX

UP ALOFT

After Harry Goodall and Tom Trigger had left the park and Doctor Peters in the lurch, a grand view burst upon them as the balloon mounted to an elevation of over two thousand feet, when the rays of the bright sun enlivened the Sussex scenery and began to dry the saturated silk.

Magnificent, however, as the change proved, the voyagers had no time to dwell upon such matters, for the open sea lay before them, and they were drifting towards it rapidly and in the direction of Newhaven. Up to this time, Goodall had kept his real project from Trigger, but now that the aeronaut and his assistant were alone in the empyrean, there was no longer any reason for concealing from Tom that they were not aloft solely for the object of drying the balloon, but principally to carry out the daring and novel idea of pursuing the fugitives, Falcon and Croft, should they have crossed over to Dieppe by the steamer from Newhaven. And certainty as to this Goodall expected to get from Warner, whom he had arranged to pick up and take in his balloon somewhere near the coast by preconcerted signal. This was the scheme concocted by Harry Goodall, and listened to with approval by the squire when they journeyed to Lewes, though, of course, it was not finally settled until Warner had agreed to it.

Harry Goodall, soon after passing the Sussex Downs, in pursuance of this piece of aeronautic strategy, lowered a long trail rope to check the speed of his balloon over the marshes, so that he could pull up with less difficulty as they drew near to the coast. And on his side, Simon Warner was fortunately enabled to expedite the aeronaut’s efforts on noticing the balloon by picking up a fly returning from the station. This was a special bit of good luck, as the fly man, Richard Trimmons, knew the country intimately and had done a little ballooning himself. Directly they caught sight of the balloon, they commenced signalling to Mr Goodall to anchor near Bishopstone Church where there was a sheltered spot. Here, two other Seafordites, viz., Blucher Gray of Pelham Place, and Mr Charles Strive, a retired chief officer of the Blatchington coastguard, presented themselves, and they very obligingly, together with others, rendered valuable assistance in securing the balloon.

On this being effected, the detective rushed up to Harry Goodall with great glee and shook hands.

“Well, Warner, what is the news?”

“F. has baffled us, sir, up to the present time, but he is believed to be not far off. C. has escaped in a fishing-lugger. I saw him put off in a boat, but the French craft weighed anchor immediately and set sail, so that I could not overtake him.”

“I don’t know of whom you are speaking,” said Mr Strive, “but I saw a man put off to the lugger, and I noticed him particularly, as I saw at a glance that he was not a pilot from his gait, let alone what he carried. The little fellow had a black leather bag, not at all what a seaman would have owned. I was on the old battery fore-shore; he seemed to be afraid lest the sea should get into his bag.”

“I was too far off to notice that,” said Warner, “but I am sure he was Eben, Mr Goodall.”

“We have picked up important news, Tom,” said the aeronaut to Trigger.

“You’re just about right, sir,” said Tom.

“And you are ready to go along with us, Warner, just as you are?”

“I am fully prepared, sir, and have my warrants, handcuffs and dusting-irons in this bag, and am ready for one or both of them if we can see them on the other side, or overhaul them on the high seas.”

“Jump in, then, while Trigger puts out ballast equal to your weight. What do you scale, Warner?” asked Mr Goodall.

“About eleven stone, sir.”

“Then chuck out six sand bags, Tom, when I tell you, but, first, I should like to thank our friends here for their kind assistance.” Turning to them, he remarked “that they could do him one or two little favours if they would be so obliging.”

“Name them,” said Mr Strive.

“In the first place, please to bring in that grapnel, Mr Gray, and if you are going to Newhaven, I will thank you to call on the harbour-master and just tell him what you have seen; and if you can pick up and tell him anything more about the Wedwell Park fugitives, do so.”

“I read something about _them_ in a Sussex paper,” said Blucher Gray.

“What sort of man was the other one who is missing?” asked the fly man, Trimmons.

“A fine, tall-looking man,” said Harry Goodall, “the very reverse of the fellow we are now in pursuit of.”

“It strikes me very forcibly,” said Blucher Gray, scratching his head in a reflective way, “that the captain of the French lugger is a person I know.”

“Then just dot his name down on paper,” cried Warner.

“Now, can you tell us, Mr Strive,” asked the aeronaut, “if that lugger had anything peculiar in her rig and cut by which we may be better able to make her out from aloft?”

“Certainly. Here I will sketch you an outline of her general appearance, and the number on her sails, sir, and I don’t fancy that you will see many fishing luggers crossing the Channel so soon after last night’s gale. You will make her out, therefore, the more easily; but with the fresh northerly breeze she will be a long way ahead of you.”

“Precisely. I am allowing for that, Mr Strive, but a balloon will travel very fast in this fresh upper current into which we shall soon mount. Perhaps one or other of you may hear of the other party who is wanted. And do, please, accept my best thanks for your valuable hints, gentlemen,” said Harry Goodall.

“Come here, fly man,” said Warner to Dick Trimmons. “I haven’t paid you for the lift you gave me. Take the coin now, and please tell me who the gent was you took over, as you told me, so early to Newhaven?”

“I don’t know his name; he is a stranger in Seaford, but now I come to think of it, he is uncommonly like the tall gentleman you’re after.”

“How was he dressed?”

“He looked like a yachtsman, sir.”

“There is a yacht lying in the harbour,” said Mr Strive, “but I don’t think Trimmons’s fare was anyone you’re looking for.”

“Don’t know so much about that,” said Warner.

“I’m not myself sure,” said Harry Goodall, “but you can mention the fact to the harbour-master, Gray.”

“All right, sir.”

“I would recommend you now, gentlemen,” said Mr Strive, “to make the most of your time, and if we can hear anything that will assist you, either of us can give information where it will be thankfully received, without mentioning localities or names.”

“A good idea,” cried Mr Goodall. “And now, do you happen to have a road-side inn near here?”

“Yes, sir, there is the ‘Buckle’ close at hand, a nice, snug, road-side house of call.”

“Well, please to refresh these helps with this sovereign’s worth of whatever they like best to ask for. I suppose they have teetotal drinks at the ‘Buckle?’”

“Yes, all sorts there, sir.”

The ex-chief officer then cried out,--

“Three cheers, you men!”

And away went the aeronaut in excellent spirits. Warner, when asked how he liked the outlook and the pace at which they bowled along, replied,--

“Not so fast, is it, Mr Goodall?”

“It may not seem so to a novice,” said the aeronaut, “but if you keep your eye on those two full-rigged ships in the distance, and then look back at the ‘Buckle’ Inn, Warner, you will soon see the rate at which we are moving.”

Warner had his own binocular, and used it as if he were accustomed to aerial reconnoitring but the increasing extent of the sea-scape, together with the rapid movement of the balloon from the shore, and the nearer approach of the shipping in their eight miles distance from the coast, soon convinced the anxious detective that they were going much faster than he supposed.

Tom Trigger kept his eye on Warner, while Harry Goodall studied his map and instruments, not that Tom thought their bold passenger would fall overboard or funk, but he feared that the aerial detective might tread upon the armoury which had been stowed away so carefully beneath a canvas covering before they left Wedwell Park.

Presently Warner’s attention was called to the firearms by a timely caution, for Simon kept turning himself round with a jerk, first on one tack and then on another, as if he could scarcely make out whether they were going back to the Sussex coast or making straightway for mid-Channel.

It was owing to the occasional rotation of the balloon on her own axis that he became so bewildered, and he acknowledged, when the cause was explained to him, that one required a knowledge of practical ballooning to decide the line of advance in the air. It was the rotary motion which made him lose sight of the two ships which he was searching for.

“They have disappeared,” said the aeronaut, in a joke.

“Foundered do you mean, sir?” asked Simon.

“No, but they have turned up behind us.”

On looking back towards the coast, Warner found that they had passed over them in about twenty minutes from the time they left. He then knew that they were going ahead without giving much sign as to their progress, so far as motion or unpleasant sensation were concerned.

“If that is the way big ships are dodging about,” cried Warner, “I must keep a sharp lookout for the lugger.”

“Yes,” said the aeronaut, “and I am instructing you how to do so, though I have no expectations of seeing her yet.”

“If they show fight, sir, we shall present a fine target.”

“Decidedly, Simon, but we shall be able to defend ourselves, and then, you know, we have the advantage of a more elevated position, even if we close with them. Besides, you see those outside contrivances?”

“What about them, Mr Goodall?”

“Oh, a great deal. That canvas bag, or cone, can be lowered so as to check our speed, or bring us to on the water, and the other device is to deflect our course, either one way or the other, if we have to drop upon them when the wind is not altogether fair; and then the two combined will furnish us with a fair amount of steering power, if once we lower near the sea, but without dipping into it, Simon.”

“That may be another vital point, sir,” said the detective.

“Yes, and I will tell you of a third. In the event of a scrimmage, we can hoist that lee-board to afford us protection.”

“That may be one more vital consideration, sir. But dare we use firearms under a balloon? Would not the gas become ignited?”

“If we were to blaze away up here it might, but not if we board the lugger under fire, Simon. Do you follow me?”

“I do, sir, without turning a hair, and only wish we had the chance of doing so.”

“You will clearly understand, my plucky friend, that should we swoop down a few thousand feet and come to close quarters, the gas in the lower part of the balloon would shrink, because the atmosphere is heavier on the surface of our planet, and there, if no gas was in the lower portion of our balloon none could pass out to risk an explosion, so that down below arms of precision could be discharged in safety.”

“There’s more to learn in ballooning, Mr Goodall, than a lot of people think of, and I can see now that your plans for guiding might prove, in actual conflict, more reliable than one-half of these pretended inventions for flying and dodging about an enemy and destroying London by dynamite.”

“Yes, it won’t do in aeronautics, Warner, to have much to do with _flight_, unless you can do it quickly and safely, if I may pun a bit among ourselves up here, for unless you can make a masterly retreat, or an unseen approach in a balloon, it becomes, as you said just now, a sightly target, and is more likely to be brought down by marksmen from below, than for roving riflemen to hit while aloft, or to do harm when they are flicking about hither and thither, and having it sharp themselves, perhaps, between wind and gas.”

“Ay, under the flank, sir, you mean, in a tender and vital part; but how, then, shall _we_ fare, sir, if we have to chastise the crew of the lugger if they don’t surrender Croft?”

“If we attempt that we shall be at a low elevation and almost stationary. Even then I should not think of wasting an ounce of powder or shot, unless we were first attacked and driven to act on the defensive.”

“You haven’t told Warner, Mr Goodall,” said Tom Trigger, who had been thoroughly enjoying the rehearsal, “that besides all sorts of firearms, we are provided with an air-gun.”

“A most suitable weapon, I should say,” replied the detective, “for with that you might wing or disable them without making a noise, which might be a further vital point, sir; but as to myself, Mr Goodall, I beg to say that I am provided with my own bull-dog.”

“Revolver, you mean, I suppose?”

“I sit corrected, sir, and need not produce my pistol in evidence.”

“No, don’t do that if it is charged, Simon.”

“It is as empty, sir, as my poor stomach, which, to tell you the truth, Mr Goodall, has had nothing solid in it for fifteen hours at least, and what with looking for Croft last evening and for the balloon this morning, I have entirely neglected myself.”

“No doubt Warner is as hungry as a hunter, sir,” said Trigger, as if he were saying one word for the detective and two for himself.

“Warner _is_ a hunter, Tom, and will do honour to the chase; but pipe to breakfast--I had forgotten what we had in store--and give Warner a dash of cognac with a bottle of aerated water to begin with.”

“Never mind the water, Mr Goodall, I am pretty well aerated already; but what with the sea air and the bright prospects before us, I can do some of that tempting-looking tongue and the corned beef that Trigger has produced.”

“They were thoughtfully provided by Squire Dove,” said the aeronaut.

“Then here’s good luck to him and to us all, and may we collar Croft and recover the squire’s stolen property.”

“We will gladly join in that sentiment,” said Mr Goodall, “and I will either keep Warner company by feeding, or abstain like Tom Trigger.”

“Don’t talk about my abstaining, sir, for it is as much as ever I can do to keep my hands off these good things, that is, until I’m told to start.”

“Let us all hands go ahead then, steward, for I have often read that Englishmen can fight and work quite as well on a full as an empty stomach, and I hope that the raised pie and the tongue will not dim our sight, even if they diminish our hunger.”

“I can see further now, sir, than I could half an hour back,” cried Warner, as he looked towards Tom to have his glass replenished.

“I know you can see into your tumbler,” said Trigger, “and that it is empty.”

“Cease firing your jokes, you two, and lend me your glass, Warner,” cried Harry Goodall, as he shaded his eyes with one hand. “Be serious now, my lads, for I can see the French coast, and a mist is rising behind it.”

“The wind over the land seems very variable,” said Trigger. “Look at the smoke from those steamers, Mr Goodall.”

“Any doubt about our popping across, sir?” asked the detective.

“Not unless the upper current in which we are bowling along changes,” said Harry Goodall. “In that case we may not fetch the land where we expected to do.”

“If I can only cast my eyes on Croft, and place the handcuffs round his wrists, I don’t mind a ducking, sir,” said Warner.

“Don’t forget that he is as slippery as an eel, Warner,” cried the aeronaut, whose telescope was directed on some small vessel in the distance.

“It grows darker over the land, sir!” said Trigger.

“It does, Tom, and that is why we shall have all our work to do in sighting the lugger before the sea fog envelopes her, that is, if she is, as we suppose, between us and the French coast.”