"Something will have to be done," said the professor sternly, turning suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that car. "We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl, Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen understand anything about air-ships?" And he gave a quick, scrutinising gaze at our uniforms, as though he could find thereon some badge which showed we belonged to the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers. "We know nothing whatever," replied Jose quietly, stamping up and down to keep his feet warm. "We have come, for pleasure we thought it, and here is the result." "Besides, professor," I cut in, "are not you really the one to take charge of operations at this juncture? I understand that you come from the Meteorological Office and that ventures like this fall under your review in your department. Surely you know enough of ballooning by which, even if you couldn't make the machine perform like the inventor intended it should, you could at least take us back to the earth." "I am not so sure about that," said the man quickly, and then all at once he stopped and bit his lip. It was obvious that he had said a little more than he intended, and a new suspicion about him gathered shape and force in my mind. Suppose he were not the Professor Stephen Leopardi that Doris had pretended but some other spy sent by Cuthbertson to keep an eye on the hunchback? "Well, at all events, we can't go blindly to death like this," I snapped. "Look, there is Miss Napier making signals to us with her handkerchief? Where, though, is the hunchback? Ah! I see. The fright has been too much for him. He has collapsed, fainted, and dropped like a log to the seat on the side of the car. We must do something or she will grow frantic." And waving a hand to her I, half unconscious of what I had myself resolved upon, scrambled on to the stays of the machine and began to crawl like a monkey towards the tiny platform from which poor Captain Sparhawk had fallen, and on which stood the motor and the different cords and levers that controlled the machine. "Come back! Come back!" Casteno shouted. "Are you mad, man? Don't you understand that in a cold, rarefied atmosphere like this the gas in the balloon is bound to condense, and that, as surely as an apple drops from a tree to the earth instead of the sky, by the law of gravitation, we must land on terra firma again?"