ts hands and legs in the air like
a tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went
staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him,
for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.

We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head
bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance,
and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half
a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child,
which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her
before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and
besides, we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one
while, anyway, with the wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did.
We swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched
up the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good
humor, too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off
of a horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her
and tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when
he was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and
she heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump
for the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged
Jim, and then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck,
and hugged him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and
glorifying all the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and
in a minute we was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with
the back of her head between her shoulders and the child with its arms
locked around her neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight
a-sailing away in the sky.

CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA

"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around
his feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north
of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the
weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles
north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kin