As the doctor shouted, Joe had turned his head, but
without checking his horse. The ladder dropped close to
him, and at the instant he grasped it the doctor again
shouted to Kennedy:
"Throw ballast!"
"It's done!"
And the Victoria, lightened by a weight greater than
Joe's, shot up one hundred and fifty feet into the air.
Joe clung with all his strength to the ladder during
the wide oscillations that it had to describe, and then
making an indescribable gesture to the Arabs, and climbing
with the agility of a monkey, he sprang up to his companions,
who received him with open arms.
The Arabs uttered a scream of astonishment and rage.
The fugitive had been snatched from them on the wing,
and the Victoria was rapidly speeding far beyond
their reach.
"Master! Kennedy!" ejaculated Joe, and overwhelmed,
at last, with fatigue and emotion, the poor fellow
fainted away, while Kennedy, almost beside himself,
kept exclaiming:
"Saved--saved!"
"Saved indeed!" murmured the doctor, who had recovered
all his phlegmatic coolness.
Joe was almost naked. His bleeding arms, his body
covered with cuts and bruises, told what his sufferings had
been. The doctor quietly dressed his wounds, and laid
him comfortably under the awning.
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