He saw the sense of this, and turned to business, though with a snarl. As a gull from the cliff, the _Lunardi_ slanted downwards, and passing the brig by less than a cable's length to leeward, soused into the sea. I say "soused": for I confess that the shock belied the promise of our easy descent. The _Lunardi_ floated: but it also drove before the wind. And as it dragged the car after it like a tilted pail, the four drenched and blinded aeronauts struggled through the spray and gripped the hoop, the netting--nay, dug their nails into the oiled silk. In its new element the machine became inspired with a sudden infernal malice. It sank like a pillow if we tried to climb it: it rolled us over in the brine; it allowed us no moment for a backward glance. I spied a small cutter-rigged craft tacking towards us, a mile and more to leeward, and wondered if the captain of the brig had left our rescue to it. He had not. I heard a shout behind us; a rattle of oars as the bowmen shipped them; and a hand gripped my collar. So one by one we were plucked--uncommon specimens!--from the deep; rescued from what Mr. Sheepshanks a minute later, as he sat on a thwart and wiped his spectacles, justly termed "a predicament, sir, as disconcerting as any my experience supplies." CHAPTER XXXIV CAPTAIN COLENSO "But what be us to do with the balloon, sir?" the coxswain demanded. Had it been my affair, I believe I should have obeyed a ridiculous impulse and begged them to keep it for their trouble; so weary was I of the machine. Byfield, however, directed them to slit a seam of the oiled silk and cut away the car, which was by this time wholly submerged and not to be lifted. At once the _Lunardi_ collapsed and became manageable; and having roped it to a ring-bolt astern, the crew fell to their oars. My teeth were chattering. These operations of salvage had taken time, and it took us a further unconscionable time to cover the distance between us and the brig as she lay hove-to, her maintopsail aback and her headsails drawing. "Feels like towing a whale, sir," the oarsman behind me panted. I whipped round. The voice--yes, and the face--were the voice and face of the seaman who sat and steered us: the voice English, of a sort; the face of no pattern that I recognised for English. The fellows were as like as two peas: as like as the two drovers Sim and Candlish had been: you might put them both at forty; grizzled men, pursed about the eyes with seafaring. And now that I came to look, the three rowers forward, though mere lads, repeated their elders' features and build; the gaunt frame, the long, serious face, the swarthy complexion and meditative eye--in short, Don Quixote of la Mancha at various stages of growth. Men and lads, I remarked, wore silver earrings.