His wife, screaming at the top of her voice, rushed from the kitchen door.

“Hey, you come back with my husband!” she shouted.

“Lemme go!  Lemme go!” bawled the farmer as loudly as he could, for, held securely by his stout overalls, he was carried high above his own buildings.  He kicked and struggled furiously.

“Keep still,” shouted Jack, in serious alarm, from the side of the Wondership.  “Keep still or you’ll kick yourself off.”

The farmer had sense enough to obey.  He hung upside down like a limp scarecrow, while his farm hands gaped up at him and the hired girl was busy pouring buckets of water over his wife who was in hysterics.

“Gracious, now we’ve done it!” gasped Tom in dismay.

CHAPTER X.

An involuntary aeronaut.

“Steady, Tom, steady,” warned Jack, as he set the pumps to work drawing gas from the bag into the reservoir.

The Wondership, her buoyancy thus diminished, began to descend.

“What are you going to do?” asked Tom.

“Drop our passenger,” said Jack, with a grin he could not suppress, for the struggling farmer was within a few feet of the ground now and even if he did kick himself loose, for his struggles had begun again, he could not have hurt himself much.

“Back up till we get over that haystack,” said Jack, “and then play out rope till we lower him.  It’ll make a nice soft jumping-off place.”

Tom obeyed, pulling a reverse lever.  The Wondership, steered with skill by Jack’s practiced hand, backed slowly up.  At length they hung directly over the haystack.  Jack turned and nodded.  Tom sprang to the rope and lowered the indignant farmer into the soft hay.  The man lost no time in disentangling himself.  Then he sprang to his feet and began hurling vituperation at them at the top of his lungs.

“I’ll have ther law on yer fer this,” he yelled.  “Tryin’ ter kidnap me and bustin’ down my barn.  I’ll see whether such goin’s on is allowed in ther sufferin’ state uv Massachusetts, yew see if I don’t, consarn yer.  I’ll——­”

But the Wondership, bearing the two boys who could not help laughing heartily, although they feared serious consequences might come of the accident, was winging its way onward out of earshot of the not unnaturally indignant Ezra Perkins.

They passed Rayburn before Jack noticed a peculiar smell in the atmosphere.

It was leaking gas.  Then, for the first time, he recollected that the farmer might have hit the gas bag above them with his double shots, although, till then, there had been no indication that such was the case.

He called Tom to the wheel, explaining his suspicions and clambered out on the rigging to see if he could find any holes in the balloon.  It would have made a less steady boy dizzy and sick to stand on the edge of the Wondership, clinging to one of the supports that held the body of the craft to the gas-bag, while the whole affair plunged and swayed five hundred feet above the earth.  But Jack, used as he was to navigating the air, felt none of these qualms.