bag.

"What can he be going to do?" asked Captain Hazzard.

"I think I know," said Frank. "The valve must be stuck and they have
decided now that as we are so near they will take a chance and open it
and risk a drop into the sea rather than have the over-distended bag
blow up."

"Of course. I never thought of that," rejoined the captain, "that's
just what they are doing."

"That man is taking a desperate chance," put in Professor Simeon
Sandburr, who had climbed up and joined the party and looked with his
long legs and big round glasses, like some queer sort of a bird
perched in the rigging. "Hydrogen gas is deadly and if he should
inhale any of it he would die like a bug in a camphor bottle."

Interest on board the Southern Cross was now intense in the fate of
the dirigible. Even the old chief engineer had left his engines and
wiping his hands with a bit of waste, stood gazing at the distressed
cloud clipper.

"The mon moost be daft," he exclaimed, "any mon that wud go tae sea in
sic a craft moost be daft. It's fair temptin' o' providence."

At that instant there was a sharp and sudden collapse of the balloon
bag. It seemed to shrivel like a bit of burned paper, and the
structure below it fell like a stone into the ocean, carrying with it
the man who had remained on it. Of the other, the one who had climbed