. So he said we
better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way
to London. We cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As
we slanted along down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we
shed our furs. But it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while
it was 'most too moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!

We settled down to within thirty foot of the land--that is, it was land
if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me
clumb down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt
amazing good--that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our
feet like hot embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to
meet him; but we heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly
dancing, and making signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what
he said, but we was scared anyway, and begun to heel it back to the
balloon. When we got close enough, we understood the words, and they
made me sick:

"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass!
Run, boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de
menagerie, en dey ain't nobody to stop him!"

It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could
only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost
gaining on you.

Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and
as soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But
Jim had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned
along up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a
most ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to
take one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way
under me.

But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little,
and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve
feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me,
and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing
it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to
be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and
thankful all up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't
climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down
the other. It is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and
it is not to be recommended, eit