THREE:The folly of Ripperda, however, had ruined his credit with his own sovereigns and the nation even more than with foreign Powers. His swaggering and inflated language, in which he imagined that he was enacting Alberoni, had destroyed all faith in him. But his final blow came from his own false representations to each other of the preparations for war made by Austria and Spain. Count K?nigseck was most indignant when he discovered the miserable resources of the Spanish monarchy in comparison with the pompous descriptions made of them by Ripperda at Vienna; and the Spanish Court was equally disappointed by a discovery of the real military status of Austria. Ripperda was suddenly and ignominiously dismissed on the 14th of May.Then, pushing off in the rubber boat, he sat still, his dry clothes in a compact bundle in the boat thwarts, while Jeff let the wind and tide-run carry his amphibian out of the channel to where he could get sea space for a start, to get the amphibian pontoons on the step from which, with his silent cargo of human tragedy, Jeff lifted into air and went out of sight, southbound.