do. He says:

"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly
new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at
home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me
and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."

"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,
'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur
Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."

That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:

"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your
compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United
States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike
the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge
right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in
an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi--at
the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air
that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like a washbowl turned
upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which
way, 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 hund