"O, come now!" the aeronaut objected. "And who may you be, to be ordering a man about?" "I believe I have already answered that question twice in your hearing." "Mosha the Viscount Thingamy de Something-or-other? I dare say!" "Have you any objection?" "Not the smallest. For all I care, you are Robert Burns, or Napoleon Buonaparte, or anything, from the Mother of the Gracchi to Balaam's Ass. But I knew you first as Mr. Ducie; and you may take it that I'm Mr. Don't-see." He reached up a hand towards the valve-string. "What are you proposing to do?" "To descend." "What?--back to the enclosure?" "Scarcely that, seeing that we have struck a northerly current, and are travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour, perhaps. That's Broad Law to the south of us, as I make it out." "But why descend at all?" "Because it sticks in my head that some one in the crowd called you by a name that wasn't Ducie; and by a title, for that matter, which didn't sound like 'Viscount.' I took it at the time for a constable's trick; but I begin to have my strong doubts." The fellow was dangerous. I stooped nonchalantly on pretence of picking up a plaid; for the air had turned bitterly cold of a sudden. "Mr. Byfield, a word in your private ear, if you will." "As you please," said he, dropping the valve-string. We leaned together over the breastwork of the car. "If I mistake not," I said, speaking low, "the name was Champdivers." He nodded. "The gentleman who raised that foolish but infernally risky cry was my own cousin, the Viscount de Saint-Yves. I give you my word of honour to that." Observing that this staggered him, I added, mighty slily, "I suppose it doesn't occur to you now that the whole affair was a game, for a friendly wager?" "No," he answered brutally, "it doesn't. And what's more, it won't go down." "In that respect," said I, with a sudden change of key, "it resembles your balloon. But I admire the obstinacy of your suspicions; since, as a matter of fact, I am Champdivers." "The mur----" "Certainly not. I killed the man in fair duel." "Ha!" he eyed me with sour distrust. "That is what you have to prove." "Man alive, you don't expect me to demonstrate it up here, by the simple apparatus of ballooning?" "There is no talk of 'up here,'" said he, and reached for the valve-string.