't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but
there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had
always been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million
of them as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.

We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing
for the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed
down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to
feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it.
So we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most
noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes
stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.

It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find
land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean over
it. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't
want to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most
seemed as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the
same. And always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me,
and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and
bothering, and sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do
this, and making me do that and t'other, and always selecting out
the things I didn't want to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I
shirked and done something else, and just aggravating the life out of a
body all the time; but up here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny
and lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things
to see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good people, and just
holiday all the time. Land, I warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at
civilization again. Now, one of the worst things about civilization is,
that anybody that gits a letter with trouble in it comes and tells you
all about it and makes you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you the
troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and
dismal