Steadying its motion, directing it toward the end of the cable, he began studying the problem at hand. And then--something happened. Did his hand slip? Did the noose about his foot give away? He will never know. Nor will he forget that instant when his flashlight, slipping from his chattering teeth, shot downward and he, by the merest chance, escaped following it. How it happened he will never be able to tell. This much he knew: he hung there in all that blackness supporting his weight by one desperately gripping hand. Somewhere below was the noose that should offer him footing. Somewhere far, far below were black waters waiting. And through his mind there flashed a thousand pictures of the bright and beautiful world he might, in ten seconds' time, leave behind. All this in the space of a split second, then groping madly, he found the rope with his other hand. After that began the heart-breaking task of groping in the dark with his foot for the dangling rope loop, while the muscles in his arms became burning bands of fire. "I must win!" he whispered. "I must!" "Johnny! Johnny Thompson!" came from above. "What has happened?" "Don't know. I--I'm dangling. Dra--draw me up if you can." Came a sudden tug on the rope that all but tore the rope from his grip. "No! No! Wait!" Once again he sought that noose with his toe. * * * * * * * * As for Beth, she had gone shooting up in that express elevator in the Skidmore Building. Like a rubber ball she bounded from the car, then raced for a cubby-hole in a corner where two men were standing. "The balloon!" she exclaimed. "The captive balloon! It's loose, drifting! You must find it with your light!" "What's that?" one man demanded sharply. "Impossible! There's no gale. That cable couldn't break!" "It's loose! Drifting!" the girl insisted. "They cut the cable, someone cut it. My brother and another boy are in the balloon. You must save them." One man glanced at the other. "All right, we better try it, Ben!" At that a long finger of white light began feeling its way through the blackness that is sky above Lake Michigan on a cloudy night. Johnny, unable to find the loop in the rope, feeling his strength unequal to a climb hand over hand, felt the muscles of his arms weaken until all seemed lost. And then, as if some miracle had been done, night turned into day. The powerful light had reached him only for a second, but that was enough. His keen eye had caught the loop in the rope. It was by his knee. A sudden fling and his knee was resting in that loop. "All--all right now!" he called. "Try to pull me up." And at that the gleam of that powerful searchlight returned to rest on the spot of air in which the runaway balloon hung. "I'll step over and call the sausage balloon, Ben," one of the men in the great steel tower said to the other as Beth, at sight of the balloon still drifting high, began breathing more easily. "They'll have to go to the rescue."