"Yes"--from Duncan--"but we should have somebody to meet us when we got on shore there. But we don't know where this aërial tour may end."
"Well, we're going high enough anyhow," said Frank. "And," he added, "I'm not half so funky as I thought I'd be. I've often thought, mind you, that I'd like the going up in a balloon, 'cause there is plenty of sky-room, and nothing to knock your head against. It was the thoughts of alighting on earth again that always had terrors for me, hitting against poplar-trees and steeples and such, or spiked on the weather-cock of a town-hall and left to kick. But this is glorious, and I suppose we'll get down all straight."
Duncan held down his hand to Viking, and the honest dog licked it with his soft tongue.
"It is so good of you to take me, master," he seemed to say. "I don't know where in all the world you're off to, but you're here, and that's good enough for old Vike."
"I say, Duncan," said Conal, "aren't we taking an easterly direction?"
Duncan was rated "captain of the car", so all questions were referred to him.
"It really looks a little like it," was the reply, "unless the island down yonder, with our dear friends on it, has broken adrift, and is bound for the mainland."
They could talk lightly, almost joyously now, so bracing was the air, and so delicious the sensation of floating through space.
"I say, captain," said Frank, "hadn't we better put another man to the wheel, and tack and half tack for a time. Or suppose we lie to, eh?"
"Providence is at the wheel, Frank, but we're at the mercy of every breeze that may blow."
They were evidently being driven out to sea, but there was no help for it.
And so easterwards, ever easterwards, they drifted for many hours. The island itself was now but a little dark dot on the blue, and several other islets had come into view, and latterly, oh, joy! a steamer.
In case of meeting a ship, several tin flagons had been prepared and ballasted, with letters in them.
The balloon was drifting but slowly now, and seemed to be on the turn.
Signals were accordingly made, while Conal, with the telescope, kept the ship's quarter-deck well under observation.
"Ha!" he cried, "they see us, and are signalling back."
Overboard now were thrown not one flask only, but three, and each would tell the same story of the ship-wrecked mariners, dying slowly for want of water on the lonely island far to the west. The latitude and longitude of this was given also.