"No wonder the navy didn't suit you," he said. "You look half sick, Stevens. Anything special the matter with you? Hungry?" "No," said the other, his teeth chattering again. "I don't want anything to eat. I haven't been well lately. Those men who were after me--" He stopped abruptly and turned so white that Fred thought he was going to faint. Recovering himself with an effort, Stevens continued: "This balloon business is getting on to my nerves, I guess. Isn't it about time to think of landing?" "Landing!" exclaimed the other. "Not by any means. We must put a little more real estate between us and Oyama's front before we get down to terra firma. But we're going like an express train now, unless I am mistaken. It's hard to judge our speed, because we're just drifting with the current. I can't say I like so much southing, either. As near as I can tell, we're just about following the line of the railway. See--there it is--that long straight line!" But Stevens did not care to look. "Why were those fellows chasing you, if I may ask?" demanded the reporter, settling himself to a comfortable position in the car. "They--I don't know--well," said Stevens desperately, "if you must know, they were Boxers." Larkin started. "What, the society that started the trouble with the missionaries two or three years ago, and pretty nearly did up the foreign embassies in Pekin?" 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.