They had not even the option of jumping out, for they did not know how
to open the sliding doors; and even if they had done, what feminine
nerves could have faced a leap into that awful gulf which lay below
them, a two-thousand-foot dive through the clouds into the waters of the
wintry Atlantic?
They looked at each other in speechless, dazed amazement. Far away below
them on the other side of the clouds the _St. Louis_ was steaming
eastward, and with her were going the last hopes of the coronet which
was to be the matrimonial equivalent of Miss Zaidie's beauty and Russell
Rennick's millions.
They were no longer of the world. Its laws could no longer protect them.
Anything might happen, and that anything depended absolutely on the will
of the lord and master of the extraordinary vessel which, for the
present, was their only world.
"My dearest Zaidie," Mrs. Van Stuyler gasped, when she at length
recovered the power of articulate speech, "what an entirely too awful
thing this is! Why, it's abduction and nothing less. Indeed it's worse,
for he's taken us clean off the earth, and there's no more chance of
rescue than if he took us to one of those planets he said he could go
to. If I didn't feel a great responsibility for you, dear, I believe I
should faint."
By this time Miss Zaidie had recovered a good deal of her usual
composure.
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