[Illustration:  BALLAST]

“Well, sir, we shot up about a thousand feet more, and then Jones dropped the lunch-basket overboard by accident, and we went up nearly four miles Conly got blue in the face, Jones fainted, and I came near going under myself.  A minute more we’d all’ve been dead men; but I gave the valve a jerk, and we came down like a rocket-stick.  When the boys came to, Jones said he wanted to get out; and as we were only a little distance from the ground, I threw out the grapnel.

“That minute a breeze struck her, and she went along at about ninety miles an hour over some man’s garden, and the grapnel caught his grape-arbor snatched it up, and pretty soon got it tangled with the weathercock on the Presbyterian church-steeple.  I cut the rope and left it there, and I understand that the deacons sued the owner because he wouldn’t take it down.  Raised an awful fuss and sent the sheriff after me.  Trying to make scientific investigation seem like a crime, and I working all the time like a horse to unfold the phenomena of nature!  If they had loved knowledge, they wouldn’t’ve cared if I’d’ve ripped off their old steeple and dropped it down like an extinguisher on top of some factory chimney.

“So, when we left the grape-arbor, we went up again, and Jones got sicker and said he must get out.  So I rigged up another grapnel and threw it over.  We were just passing a farm near the river; and as the wind was high, the grapnel tore through two fences and pulled the roof off of a smoke-house, and then, as nothing would hold her, we swooped into the woods, when we ran against a tree.  The branches skinned Conly’s face and nearly put out my right eye, and knocked four teeth out of Jones’ mouth.  It was the most exciting and interesting voyage I ever made in my life; and I was just beginning to get some satisfaction from it—­just getting warmed up and preparing to take some meteorological observations—­when Jones became so very anxious to quit that I didn’t like to refuse, although it went fearfully against the grain for the reason that I hated to give up and abandon my scientific investigations.

“So I threw out my coat and boots, and made the other fellows do the same, and we rose above the trees and sailed along splendidly until we struck the river.  Then she suddenly dodged down, and the edge of the car caught in the water; so the wind took her, and we went scudding along like lightning, nearly drowned.  Conly was washed overboard, and that lightened her, so she went up again.  I was for staying up, but Jones said he’d die if he didn’t get out soon; and besides, he thought we ought to look after Conly.  But I said Conly was probably drowned, anyhow, so it was hardly worth while to sacrifice our experiments on that account; and I told Jones that a man of his intelligence ought to be willing to endure something for the sake of scientific truth.  And Jones said, ’Hang scientific truth!’—­actually made that remark; and he said that if I didn’t let him out he’d jump out.  He was sick, you know.  The man was not himself, or he would never have talked in that way about a voyage that was so full of interest and so likely to reveal important secrets of nature.