The balloon, inflated on the great square of Richmond, was ready to depart on the first abatement of the wind, and, as may be supposed, the impatience among the besieged to see the storm moderate was very great.

The 18th, the 19th of March passed without any alteration in the weather.  There was even great difficulty in keeping the balloon fastened to the ground, as the squalls dashed it furiously about.

The night of the 19th passed, but the next morning the storm blew with redoubled force.  The departure of the balloon was impossible.

On that day the engineer, Cyrus Harding, was accosted in one of the streets of Richmond by a person whom he did not in the least know.  This was a sailor named Pencroft, a man of about thirty-five or forty years of age, strongly built, very sunburnt, and possessed of a pair of bright sparkling eyes and a remarkably good physiognomy.  Pencroft was an American from the North, who had sailed all the ocean over, and who had gone through every possible and almost impossible adventure that a being with two feet and no wings would encounter.  It is needless to say that he was a bold, dashing fellow, ready to dare anything and was astonished at nothing.  Pencroft at the beginning of the year had gone to Richmond on business, with a young boy of fifteen from New Jersey, son of a former captain, an orphan, whom he loved as if he had been his own child.  Not having been able to leave the town before the first operations of the siege, he found himself shut up, to his great disgust; but, not accustomed to succumb to difficulties, he resolved to escape by some means or other.  He knew the engineer-officer by reputation; he knew with what impatience that determined man chafed under his restraint.  On this day he did not, therefore, hesitate to accost him, saying, without circumlocution, “Have you had enough of Richmond, captain?”

The engineer looked fixedly at the man who spoke, and who added, in a low voice,—­

“Captain Harding, will you try to escape?”

“When?” asked the engineer quickly, and it was evident that this question was uttered without consideration, for he had not yet examined the stranger who addressed him.  But after having with a penetrating eye observed the open face of the sailor, he was convinced that he had before him an honest man.

“Who are you?” he asked briefly.

Pencroft made himself known.

“Well,” replied Harding, “and in what way do you propose to escape?”

“By that lazy balloon which is left there doing nothing, and which looks to me as if it was waiting on purpose for us—­”