half suspected, larger than the balloon. It now
occurred to me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left
ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through
my mind. I began to understand that my foot had caught in a rope and
that I was hanging downward outside the car. But strange to say! I was
neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it
was a sort of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to
display in getting myself out of this [v]dilemma.

With great caution and deliberation, I put my hands behind my back and
unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my
pantaloons. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat rusty,
turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them, however,
after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the buckle and was
glad to find them remain firm in that position. Holding with my teeth
the instrument thus obtained, I proceeded to untie the knot of my
cravat; it was at length accomplished. To one end of the cravat I then
made fast the buckle, and the other end I tied, for greater security,
tightly around my wrist. Drawing now my body upward, with a prodigious
exertion of muscular force, I succeeded, at the very first trial, in
throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had
anticipated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work.

My body was now inclined toward the side of the car at an angle of about
forty-five degrees; but it must not be understood that I was therefore
only forty-five degrees below the [v]perpendicular. So far from it, I
still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon, for the change of
position which I had acquired had forced the bottom of the car
considerably outward from my position, which was accordingly one of the
most extreme peril. It should be remembered, however, that when I fell
from the car, if I had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon,
instead of turned outwardly from it as it actually was--or if, in the
second place, the cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over
the upper edge instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the
car--in either of these cases, I should have been unable to accomplish
even as much as I had now accomplished. I had therefore every reason to
be grateful, although, in point of fact, I was still too stupid to be
anything at all, and hung for perhaps a quarter of an hour in that