y, long before you get there, and you can pick out
the Mississippi without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north
nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then
you want to look sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your
left you'll see another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is a
little above St. Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine
the villages as you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in the
next fifteen minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and if
you don't, you can yell down and ask."

"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows we
kin."

The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand
his watch in a little while.

"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "This
balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe."

Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and
says:

"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seven
thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as
far." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-tale
all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles
an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current
that's going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing
without any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found,
any time you want to hunt for them."

"We'll hunt for them, sir."

"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and
it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good
deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket for
you! You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these
latitudes; and they travel low, too."

Then he ciphered on the time, and says--

"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make the
trip in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back here
Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and
books and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There
ain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker you
fetch that pipe the better."

All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out
and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and
Tom gave his last orders:

"It's 10