licate sensibility of balloons is well known. It is sufficient to
throw out the lightest article to produce a difference in its vertical
position. The apparatus in the air is like a balance of mathematical
precision. It can be thus easily understood that when it is lightened of
any considerable weight its movement will be impetuous and sudden. So
it happened on this occasion. But after being suspended for an instant
aloft, the balloon began to redescend, the gas escaping by the rent
which it was impossible to repair.

The men had done all that men could do. No human efforts could save them
now.

They must trust to the mercy of Him who rules the elements.

At four o'clock the balloon was only 500 feet above the surface of the
water.

A loud barking was heard. A dog accompanied the voyagers, and was held
pressed close to his master in the meshes of the net.

"Top has seen something," cried one of the men. Then immediately a loud
voice shouted,--

"Land! land!" The balloon, which the wind still drove towards the
southwest, had since daybreak gone a considerable distance, which might
be reckoned by hundreds of miles, and a tolerably high land had, in
fact, appeared in that direction. But this land was still thirty miles
off. It would not take less than an hour to get to it, and then there
was the chance of falling to leeward.

An hour! Might not the balloon before that be emptied of all the fluid
it yet retained?

Such was the terrible question! The voyagers could distinctly see that
solid spot which they must reach at any cost. They were ignorant of what
it was, whether an island or a continent, for they did not know to what
part of the world the hurricane had driven them. But they must reach
this land, whether inhabited or desolate, whether hospitable or not.

It was evident that the balloon could no longer support itself! Several
times already had the crests of the enormous billows licked the bottom
of the net, making it still heavier, and the balloon only half rose,
like a bird with a wounded wing. Half an hour later the land was not
more than a mile off, but the balloon, exhausted, flabby, hanging in
great folds, had gas in its upper part alone. The voyagers, clinging to
the net, were still too heavy for it, and soon, half plunged into the
sea, they were beaten by the furious waves. The balloon-case bulged out
again, and the wind, taking it, drove it along like a vessel. Might it
not possibly thus reach the