“Nothing will keep the balloon up,” said Augustine Aumerle; “we must commend our souls to a merciful God.” “Can you see no ship?” cried the earl; “no object moving on the waters?” and starting up in the eagerness of hope, he himself looked over the side of the car, but almost sickening at the dizzy prospect, sank back again to his place. How gloriously burst the bright rays streaming from the eastern horizon! how splendidly rose the sun as a monarch rejoicing in his might, crimsoning the floating clouds, and casting across the waters a path of quivering gold! It struck the trembling Mabel with a sense of awful beauty, as nearer and nearer the _Eaglet_ dropped toward ocean’s liquid grave! Again the coloured stripes of the ball shone bright in the light of day, but it was with something of horror that the travellers now regarded that which Mabel had once playfully spoken of as an emblem of swollen pride. It had carried them aloft through the clouds to dreary, deathlike isolation, but failed to support them now in the hour of peril and distress. Down—down—down—yet with more rapid and breathless descent, not in perpendicular fall, but borne sideways by the freshening sea breeze, sank the once towering _Eaglet_. The white crests of the billows could now be distinguished, and even the fin of a porpoise that flashed in the sunbeam. “Might not the car float?” exclaimed Mabel; “it is so buoyant and light!” “It possibly might for a time,” replied Augustine, “were it not attached to this frightful incumbrance. Dashleigh,” he asked suddenly, “have you a knife? I parted yesterday with mine.” “For what use?” inquired the earl, as he gave a large one which he happened to have on his person. There is no time for reply, the _Eaglet_ is nearing the sea; down—down—down—till with a violent shock which splashes the spray many feet into the air, the car strikes the waves and rebounds again, its dripping, gasping occupants clinging hard to prevent themselves from being flung out into the sea. Down again—still with terrific violence; it is a frightful scene! The spirit of a demon appears to animate the balloon,—a spirit that delights in torturing its miserable victims, as it goes sweeping, dashing, whirling on, now skimming at some height above the surface of the waters, now suddenly dipping so low that the half uttered shriek of Mabel is stifled in the gasping sob of suffocation! No wretch fastened to a wild horse plunging, rearing, bounding on its way, with steaming nostril and foaming breath, ever endured the horrors of those dragged onward by that terrific engine of death, while the half submerged car leaves a long white bubbling track on the ocean!