himself: "If I were he, I should dash _now_".

But Fred Bates did not move.

Hogarth suffered agonies not less excruciating than the rack.

"Oh, whyever does he wait?" he groaned.

But now--all suddenly--it was known, it was felt, deep in five
hundred ecstatic hearts, that a convict was gone--a man overboard--a
soul in the agony--battling between life and death.

Like tempests the whistles split the air.

Where is he? Who is he? What mother bare him? It is 57! And he is
_there!_--on high--caught, to the skies.

The tumbling of four ballast bags from the balloon was marked: the
balloon darted high, wildly high; and with her, seated on the bar,
the cord between his thighs, darted high Fred Bates.

Exultant! the five hundred faces wax fire-eyed, each heart a flame
of madness. But yonder is Warder Black taking trembling, yet
careful, aim: now the report is echoing from the two Tors, the
granite-works; and that smoke no sooner thins than a whole volley of
crackling musketry is winging toward that dot under the clouds.

And it was hideous--pitiful--the quailing heart waited and was still
to see the dot dissever itself from its rod: he had been hit: was in
the middle of the vast and vacant air: and wheeling he came.