"Anything to be done?" I asked.

"Nothing," said he.

It had been growing steadily more misty even down near the water, and now
as the released balloon shot up into an altitude of five, ten, and
presently twelve thousand feet, everything in Heaven and earth
disappeared except that white and clammy fog. By a simultaneous impulse
he lit a cigarette and I a pipe, and I remember very plainly wondering
whether he felt any touch of that self-conscious defiance of fate and
deliberate intention to do the coolest thing possible, which I am free to
confess I felt myself. Probably not; Rutherford was the real Navy and I
but a zig-zag ringed R.N.V.R. amateur. Still, the spirit of the Navy is
infectious and I made a fair attempt to keep his stout heart company.

"What _ought_ to happen to a thing like this?" I enquired.

"If this wind holds we might conceivably make a landing somewhere--with
extraordinary luck."

"On the other side?"

He nodded and I reflected.

It was towards the end of August, 1914. We were somewhere about the
middle of the North Sea when the observation balloon was sent up, and I
had persuaded Rutherford to take me up with him in the basket. Five
minutes ago I had been telling myself I was the luckiest R.N.V.R.
Sub-Lieutenant in the Navy; and then suddenly the appalling thing