rk fearful destruction. If large enough (and
there is no difficulty in obtaining such a size), it would wipe out of
existence whole blocks of houses and the people in them. It would
destroy an army."

In the course of our talks I discovered a mystic side, very unexpected,
in the professor's nature. He used to speak of hydrogen, for instance,
with a certain almost reverence, as if it were something endowed with
life and consciousness, a powerful spirit, one would say, not merely a
commonplace product of chemistry, a gas from a retort.

[Illustration: A BALLOON-PICNIC AT THE AERONAUTS' HOME.]

"I have often wondered," he said one day, "as my basket has swept me
along, what there is in this silken bag above me that lifts me thus
over mountains and cities. I look up into the balloon through the open
mouth, and I see nothing; I hear nothing; I smell nothing. None of my
senses answer any call; yet somehow, strangely, in a way I can't
explain, I _perceive_ a presence. It would not be at all the same to me
were the balloon filled with air, though it would be the same to all my
senses. Again and again I have noted this thing, that hydrogen makes
itself known to men when they are near it."

He paused a moment as if to observe my attitude, to see if it were one
of scoffing. I made no remark, but begged him to go on.

"After all," he continued, "even the books allow to hydrogen properties
that are very amazing. It is the lightest of all things; it passes
through and beyond all things; it is the nearest approach we know of to
absolute nothing. Who can say that it is not related to the land of
nothing, to--" He hesitated.

"You mean?" said I.

"I don't know what I mean. I only wonder. Take this case that happened
at Ogdensburg, New York, during an ascension we made there. We had
filled the balloon with hydrogen, and were just ready to start when the
valve-cords that hang down inside the bag from the valve at the top
became twisted and drew up out of reach from the basket. In vain I tried
to get them free by poking at them with sticks and long-handled things;
the cords would not come down, and of course no sane man would make an
ascension with his balloon-valve beyond control. There was nothing for
it but to get inside that great gas-bag and undo the tangle with my
hands. So I called fifteen or twenty men to catch hold of the netting
and pull the struggling balloon down over me until I could reach the
cords. Then I--"

"Wait