if they do see us, you are
both not to say a word.'

(_Continued on page 346._)

[Illustration: "The horse shot by him."]

[Illustration: "The dog hailed his master as he passed."]

CRUISERS IN THE CLOUDS.

X.--PARACHUTES.

Venturesome people are always on the look-out for fresh excitements. To
them it is not enough to go up in the car of a balloon in the ordinary
way. They must do something that no one else had ever done. So a M.
Margat ascended sitting astride a wooden horse, and Madame Blanchard
attached fireworks to _her_ balloon, and discharged them in mid-air. At
Paris, on July 6th, 1819, she meant to make a finer display than usual,
and succeeded in letting off fountains of fire from a wooden platform
beneath the car. But, not content with this, she hoped to surprise and
delight the people of Paris still further by letting off a fresh display
from the car itself. Unfortunately she overlooked the fact that a small
stream of gas was pouring from the lower end of her balloon, owing to
the envelope having been too fully charged, and the moment she struck
the match this stream caught fire. A tongue of flame ran up the outside
of the bag, and, her efforts to put it out proving in vain, she pulled
the valve-rope to descend. The gas rushed out at the top, but caught
fire in turn, and the falling car, coming in contact with the roof of a
house, threw Madame Blanchard to the ground with fatal result.

Accidents in the air have been countless, a large number of them being
due to the use of the parachute. But this invention has frequently been
employed effectively. Though the idea of such a machine may be traced
back many hundreds of years in old drawings and old books, the inventor
of the first in which a descent was actually made, was Jacques Garnerin,
a pupil of the celebrated Professor Charles. The first to make use of it
was his little dog. M. Garnerin carried the parachute, tied underneath a
balloon, above a dense cloud. Here the little dog was carefully secured
in the car of the parachute, and the next moment disappeared swiftly
into the cloud. Garnerin pulled the valve-rope, and followed. But his
little dog was nowhere to be seen, on account of the mist. His master
was about to let out more gas, thinking that he was behindhand in this
race to the earth, when a loud and joyous barking fell on his ear. It
came from overhead, but Garnerin could see nothing until, when the cloud
was left behind, the para