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 But considering the ease with which this high-spirited crew were apt to find pretexts for skylarking—resulting more than once in the sort of "close call" which causes aeronauts to freeze with horror—Randolph usually allowed his second-in-command to err on the side of vehemence.

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"Close calls with death are common enough on futuristic people mover balloons that I'll often let my chief of security incorporate close calls with death into his warnings about using the word 'ain't'," says the worst captain of any ship ever. Erring on the side of passionate intensity (I'm using a synonym for my lesser astute, or "dumber," readers as well as for an allusion to that poem way too many people quote way too often as critical commentary on Lindsay Noseworth) might be a clever way to describe a security commander who sometimes accidentally spits all over the person they're dressing down for activities that actually put the crew in danger but it's a terrible way to describe hanging a crew member by their feet over the side of a ship thousands of feet in the air for sloppy grammar.

For the really old people or the people who used to read the comic book Groo, you might understand the following reference:

The word "skylarking" is my "Niagara Falls." But instead of turning slowly, I need to immediately listen to "That's Really Super, Supergirl."

I wish I could discuss the "high-spirited crew" but we've only met three so far and I'm supposed to be sticking to just the things mentioned in the specific sentence I'm concentrating on. I admit I don't do this well; I learned that fact over 25 years ago when I got a middling grade from a teacher who expected this kind of deep dive into the specific words used in single sentences divorced from the context of the overall plot. Also, sometimes the sentences don't seem to have a lot of subtext. Also also, I probably will wind up missing 90% of the subtext because I haven't read this book before so I'm literally reading the sentences divorced from the context of the overall plot!

Here's some information we can glean from this sentence: by 1893 in this version of our world, there's already a well-established culture of ballooning with its own lingo ("aeronauts" being a good example) and community (passing along stories about dangerous mishaps that caused these aeronauts to freeze with horror). But we've only gotten one example of this culture in this young crew. Are all the crews young because it lowers the overall weight on the ship? Or is this how people get started? Apprenticing quite young so that, by the time they're able to go out on their own balloon, they're still pretty young?

Don't expect any answers to those questions any time soon unless I start doing more than two sentences per day! Or, you know, just go read the book yourself already! According to Reddit, I'm going to die before I finish this project. Bunch of pessimists, I tell you what.