mountainside, bobbing, jumping, and weaving in tune to Passepout's laps back and forth along the deck.
When the last fireball failed even to come close, Volo shouted, 'That's it! We're out of range. You can stop running now.'
An exhausted Passepout sank to the deck in exhaustion.
'I will never throw anything at a wizard again,' he huffed and puffed.
'For as long as you live?' Volo queried.
'Longer,' the thespian conceded, adding, 'but what's that smell?'
'What smell?'
'Smells like smoke,' the exhausted rotund thespian observed.
'Fire!' Curtis yelled down to his two companions and pointed to the hull below.
Though they had managed to avoid any direct hits, one of the fireballs that had passed below had ignited a section of the hull with its flaming streamers.
Volo and Passepout spent the better part of an hour trying to contain the flames, while Curtis held them on their course. The fire finally put out and their course stabilized, all three travelers hit their bunks, exhausted beyond description.
They slept through the night, only to be awakened by the morning sun and the observation that everything seemed to be back to normal.
It was a few days before they even realized they were losing altitude.
Chapter 14
'What do you mean, we're going down?' said the on-the-verge-of panic Passepout, whose aforementioned fear of heights now seemed to have been replaced by a fear of vertical sudden impact.
'The balloon seems to be tearing at its seams,' replied Curtis, whose bravery did not mask his realization of their possible doom. 'The strain of maneuvering around those fireballs and the constant changes in air pressure are finally taking their toll.'
'Well,' replied Volo, fingering his beard while thinking out loud, 'she wasn't really constructed to hold the ship aloft.'
Curtis continued with the bad news at hand. 'I also fear that we can no longer steer. The strain of the ropes pulling on it will only hasten the wearing of the inflated material.'
'Well, then,' Volo replied, 'we seem to have only two choices. We can let the ship steer itself until eventually the balloon deflates or breaks, at which point we will surely crash, or we can try to continue to steer her, thus accelerating the damage to the balloon, and the resultant crash.'
'Great,' replied Passepout, rolling his eyes, and wondering why they were wasting time examining two equally lethal alternatives, 'but what's the difference where we crash?'
'A plain is always better than a jagged mountainside, and a gradual descent is much better than a freely accelerating plummet. Remember, when falling it is much better to emulate a feather than a rock-unless, of course, you want to make a hole in the ground or to be a pancake.'
'Mister Volo,' Curtis interjected, 'meaning no offense, of course, but I really don't think this is a good time for pithy epigraphs from some Kara-Tur fate biscuit.'
'Point well taken, lad,' the master traveler replied. 'On to the course of action. We must control and delay our descent for as long as we can, or at least until our chances of surviving a landing have increased dramatically. First, we must find something either to patch the leaks or at least cushion the balloon's surface from the abrasion of the ropes during steering. Might I recommend using the thunder lizard's skin as a cushion against the ropes? Its value as sun reflector is now outweighed by the matters at hand. And we can use the remaining paste and paint as a temporary sealant on those areas where the balloon has already worn thin.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' replied Curtis, who immediately hopped to the task at hand.
'We must also reduce the strain on the balloon's buoyancy itself,' Volo continued. 'Therefore Passepout, you and I must get rid of anything that is not an absolute necessity, to lighten our load… and that includes food.'
'Aye, aye sir,' replied Passepout, who oddly enough also immediately hopped to the task at hand and set off for the food stores.
'Mister Volo,' Curtis asked, while tending to the removal of the patch from the hull, 'what next? I mean, this won't really solve the problem.'
'No, lad,' the master traveler replied, 'but it will buy us time.'
Volo left the lad to his task and followed Passepout's lead to the ship's stores, but instead of finding the thespian busy casting the supplies overboard, he instead found him gorging himself with all of the provisions at hand.
'Passepout, what are you doing?'
'Oonk, ooff, sputter, foo,' the thespian replied, which Volo's keen ear easily translating as 'getting rid of the food.'
'That doesn't help us one bit,' the master traveler scolded. 'The food weighs the same inside you as it does inside the stores.'
'But we can't just throw it overboard,' the pudgy Passepout protested. 'What will we do for supper?'
'Supper will only concern us if we survive that long,' Volo corrected. 'Now move it!'
The thespian's grumbling retort was interrupted by the arrival of Curtis, whose flustered manner seemed to indicate that his task was also not going as well as expected. 'Mister Volo,' he implored, 'it won't work.'
'What won't work?'
'The thunder lizard's skin. I got it up from the hull all right, but I can't cut it down to a manageable size to line the ropes. The skin is too tough, and now the hull seems to be cracking as well.'
The two older travelers left the stores and accompanied the young beachcomber to the site of the former patch. The skin had been loosened and pushed to the side, now revealing two ever-widening cracks that reached out from both sides of the hole in the hull, threatening to bisect the ship lengthwise.
'The strain of dodging those fireballs must have been too much for her,' the master traveler observed.
'Well, don't just stand there, Curtis,' Passepout ordered. 'Replace the patch! Put the skin back!'
'It's too late for that,' Volo replied. 'The hole's gotten too big.'
Suddenly the ship lurched to the left, setting the deck askew.
'What happened?' the frantic Passepout demanded.
'The ropes holding the balloon to the boat must have shifted,' Volo replied. 'She's deflating faster than I thought.'
'We have to do something,' Curtis implored.
Volo climbed up top to check the riggings, his two crew mates in tow. As he feared, the balloon was deflating, the ship descending at an ever-increasing rate. Volo was at a loss, but both of his crew mates were looking to him for guidance and inspiration.
'Well,' he said out loud, trying to defuse their impending panic, 'too bad Grumby cut out with the only available Chultian air support… wait! That's it! It just might work!'
Passepout and Curtis were shocked by the sudden change in the calm conduct of their airship captain, who was quickly undoing ropes and rushing around the deck like an ant on the edge of the abyss.
'Here!' their animated leader instructed. 'Tie these ropes to each of the four corners of the lizard skin. Fast!'
'Why?' the two crewman replied, while simultaneously following orders.
'I remember reading in the papers of the explorer Artus Cimber on some of the obscure customs of some of tribes of Chult. I think it was the Tabaxi who had some sort of manhood ritual whereby the young males, upon reaching maturity, would have to throw themselves off a cliff with only an umbrella-shaped blanket to slow them down. You see, the warm air currents would slow their descent just like the geyser that inflated our balloon, thus
