The sky was clear, but she could not help worrying. “I hope the Channel stays clear. Last time I had to wait overnight.”
He touched her hand briefly. “You’ll see her again. I’ll get you there in time.”
The weather, however, did not wish to cooperate. A heavy fog stuffed the entire channel; all ferries remained in port.
“How long before it lifts?” Millie asked anxiously. Fitz had been talking to ferrymen and fishermen.
“Nobody thinks it will lift today. Half of them don’t expect anything to happen before tomorrow afternoon, and the rest believe it’s one of those that will stick around for at least forty-eight hours.”
Her heart sank. “But we can’t wait that long. She might not last.”
“I know,” he said.
“Why haven’t they built the tunnel under the Channel yet? They’ve only been talking about it for as long as anyone has been alive.”
He gazed back toward the direction they’d come. Then he looked at her, one thumb pressed into his chin. “If you have the stomach for it, we can go above the Channel.”
“Above?”
“Remember that airship I saw? Crossing the Channel in a balloon has been done before. But it’s a dangerous undertaking—especially going from east to west.”
She stared at him for a second. She’d never been on an aerial device before—never even read Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. The idea of being thousands of feet above the ground did not hold any particular appeal for her, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
The airship was very peculiar looking.
Millie was familiar with a hot air balloon’s lightbulb-like shape. But the airship’s envelope looked more like an overfilled sausage. A rectangular wicker basket was suspended beneath. And from the back of this basket, two long poles protruded, each outfitted with propellers at the end, the blades almost as long as Millie was tall.
“Yes, she is safe as can be,” said the pilot, Monsieur Duval, to Fitz, in French. “The propellers are powered by batteries, none of that gasoline engine nonsense the Germans are trying. Just you wait. They will set themselves on fire yet.”
Millie was not sure that was what she wished to hear just now, even if they didn’t have a gasoline engine. She was beginning to envy Bridget, who’d chosen to stay behind in Calais until she could cross the Channel by steamboat.
“How do you heat the air?” she asked.
“The air is not heated. That is hydrogen inside the envelope, madame.”
“Hydrogen is lighter than air, isn’t it? How will we descend?”
“Ah, very intelligent question, madame. There are two air sacks inside the hydrogen envelope and these we can fill or empty. And when they are filled, the entire weight of the airship becomes slightly larger than the lift provided by the hydrogen and we will come to a very gentle landing.”
She glanced at Fitz.
“Only if you wish to go,” he said. “But you must make up your mind soon. Or it will be dark before we reach the English coast.”
She expelled a long breath. “Let’s hurry, then.”
The moment they’d settled themselves inside the basket, which Monsieur Duval called a gondola, his assistant began tossing bags of earth overboard, while Monsieur Duval coaxed his battery-powered engine to life. The propellers rotated, at first lazily, then with vigor.
The basket lifted so gradually that Millie, absorbed with Monsieur Duval’s handling of valves and gauges, didn’t even notice they were airborne until the basket was three feet off the ground.
“Last chance to jump,” murmured Fitz.
“Same goes for you,” she said.
“I’m not afraid of falling into the English Channel.”
“Hmm, I am quite afraid of falling into the English Channel. But if I jump now”—she looked down; the ground had receded dramatically—“it is a certainty I’ll break my limbs. Whereas it is only a probability that I will need to swim.”
“Do you know how to swim?”
“No.”
“So you have entrusted your life to this mad venture.”
She exhaled. “I trust I will be all right with you by my side.”
For a moment he looked as if he didn’t quite know what to say, then he smiled. “Well, I do have a compass on my watch. Should we hit water, I’ll know which direction to push the gondola.”
The fog. She’d forgotten about the fog altogether.
Above them was a clear sky, beneath them the French countryside—dotted with sheep, cows, and hamlets. Children pointed and waved; Millie waved back. Two boys threw stones that fell far short; Fitz laughed and shouted something that sounded like French, but did not contain any French words Millie had ever been taught.
The airship kept rising. The livestock were now pinpricks; the land a parquet of tracts in varying shades of green and brown.
“How high are we?” Fitz asked.