and
in about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently
inflated. I attached the car and put all my implements in it--a
telescope, a barometer, a thermometer, an [v]electrometer, a compass, a
magnetic needle, a seconds watch, a bell, and other things. I had
further procured a globe of glass, exhausted of air and carefully closed
with a stopper, not forgetting a special apparatus for condensing air, a
copious supply of water, and a large quantity of provisions, such as
[v]pemmican, in which much [v]nutriment is contained in comparatively
little bulk. I also secured a cat in the car.

It was now nearly daybreak, and I thought it high time to take my
departure. I immediately cut the single cord which held me to the earth,
and was pleased to find that I shot upward with [v]inconceivable
rapidity, carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of
leaden ballast and able to have carried as much more.

Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when
roaring and rumbling up after me in the most [v]tumultuous and terrible
manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire and gravel and burning wood
and blazing metal that my very heart sunk within me and I fell down in
the car, trembling with terror. Some of my chemical materials had
exploded immediately beneath me almost at the moment of my leaving
earth. The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then
whirled round and round with sickening [v]velocity, and finally, reeling
and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me over the rim of the car;
and in the moment of my fall I lost consciousness.

I had no knowledge of what had saved me. When I partially recovered the
sense of existence, I found the day breaking, the balloon at a
[v]prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land
to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. My
sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means so
[v]replete with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed, there was
much of madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my
situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other,
and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to the swelling of
the veins and the horrible blackness of the finger nails. I afterward
carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly and feeling it with
minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying myself that it was
not, as I had more than