So, the way being clear, we went ahead with our publishing enterprise and I will conclude with one or two scraps of information which I have lately had from Tom. One is in answer to the question of how the cable of the balloon was broken. He thinks now that he must have cut this himself in savage desperation, fearing that Toby Schmitt would return after falling from the car. If, indeed, he did such a thing he must, of course, have been stark mad, and it is awful to think of him, the prey of such maniac fury, being carried, a lone prisoner in that little car, through clouds and darkness, who shall say how high, and for how long, and finally cast like a shipwrecked mariner upon those lonely mountains.
The harrowing story of that awful night can only be imagined, and perhaps it is better so. No doubt, it is one of God’s mercies that Tom should never recall all that happened in that insane combat among the clouds, and in the frightful journey which followed. He believes that he was in the air through another day, but I think that unlikely unless, indeed, the fugitive balloon was born hither and yon upon the changing winds before landing. All he knows is that he crawled out from under that tangled wreckage in the darkness of night.
One or two trifling details he remembers more closely. I asked him how Toby Schmitt happened to wear an American uniform and he said that evidently it was the custom of that unspeakable creature to wear not only the American, but the French and British uniforms, as occasion and the work in hand suggested. It was the sight of Schmitt in Uncle Sam’s outfit which enraged Tom to the point of uncontrollable fury, but whether this was one of the causes or just a result of his nervous state I cannot say. He tells me that in Schmitt’s room in the Grigou cottage there was the uniform of an English lieutenant, and the jacket of an American Y. M. C. A. worker.
But enough of Schmitt; my pen rebels at the task of recalling his villainy. As for the tattered German coat which Tom wore, he supposes that he found it in the car. He says that his own coat was torn away by Schmitt in the struggle and no doubt this was so, since we know that the wretch also wrenched away the cord bearing his scout badge and identification disk.