sick and faint. Only desperation nerved her after the first ten
yards. The wrenching of the balloon whirled and jostled her. At
first, holding only by her hands, she was flung out from the aft
halyard like a flag. Then instinct told her to wrap her feet around it
and she trembled on. She looked down once, saw the far swaying river,
and looked quickly up again. It was not until her groping feet touched
the rock of the ledge that she opened her eyes again. At the top of a
slender rope whirled and veered and battled a balloon with an empty
basket. The sound of creaking ropes mingled in her ears with the
chugging of a motor car. The chugging seemed a long way off, but its
noise seemed to make her dizzy. She sank in a dead faint upon the
narrow ledge beside the hooked anchor.

"Pauline! Pauline! It's I--Harry. Can't you hear me? Pauline!"

There came no sound in answer--only the creaking of the balloon rope
in the air, the rasping of the anchor fluke upon the stone.

He sprang up and back to the motor and began throwing out the robes,
blankets, tools and chains. He laid a blanket on the ground and began
to slash it into strips with his pocket knife. In the ends of the
strips he cut slits and linked the slits with the chains to form a
rope. He paused only once in his frantic labor. That was when he
rushed back to the edge of the cliff to look again and call again-in
vain. He fastened the chain at the end of his strange line to a
sapling growing some ten feet back of the verge and with a throb of
relief saw the other end drop to within a few feet of the unconscious
girl. He tested the strength of the cable by pulling on it with all
his might. It did not give. He put himself over the cliff side and
began the descent.

Owen and Hicks had not only lost the balloon, but had lost Harry, too.
They could follow him only by the deep cut tracks of his flying car,
and these were as likely to be over marshes and fields as on the
highway.

More than once Hicks urged that they turn back.

"We can't do no good," he argued. "If they ain't dead they ain't--
that's all."

"I've got to be sure," muttered Owen.

The little runabout had a hard fight to climb the cliff that Harry's
big car had taken so easily. But as they came through the grove into
view of the balloon and the empty basket the two felt amply rewarded
for their worry and trouble and toil.

"By George, it has happened. It's done!" cried Owen. No