The City of Pleasure; A Fantasia on Modern Themes (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Inspiration "PERMIT me to say, Mr. Smithers," Carpentaria remarked at last, "that your knavery is futile. The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted. We are, in fact, already descending." He held tightly in his hand the end of a rope, which reached up high above them and was lost in the mass of cordage. He had opened the valve to its widest. "Don't venture to move," he added, "or Mr. Ham will break your head for you. This affair will cost us nothing but a few thousand cubic feet of gas at a half-a-crown a thousand. What it will cost you, I shall have to consider." And without saying anything further for the moment, he unloosed a very thin cable that was wound round a windlass in the car itself, and, tying a white flag at the end of it, he began to lower it rapidly over the edge of the car. Thanks to the perfect calm which reigned, the balloon was still well over the Amusements Park. Soon the voyagers could perceive the excited movements of the crowds below, and then the whiteflag touched earth, and was seized by the eager hands of the balloonists, and slowly the balloon, in a condition bordering on collapse, subsided to the ground with the gentleness of a fatigued British workman falling asleep. And great cheers, for the second time that day, filled the air. "You might have been sure," said Carpentaria, when they were ten feet off safety, "that in a show like this due precautions would be taken against accidents and idiots !" Smithers, nearly as limp as the balloon, made no reply. Josephus Ham glared over him. "It's nothing, it's nothing!" cried Carpentaria to the staff, who besieged the party with questions. "Fill her up as quick as you can, attach the rope, and get ready for your public. Don't bother me!" And he leapt out of ...