n, as a ball might be carried on the summit of a
waterspout, had been taken into the circling movement of a column of
air and had traversed space at the rate of ninety miles an hour, turning
round and round as if seized by some aerial maelstrom.

Beneath the lower point of the balloon swung a car, containing five
passengers, scarcely visible in the midst of the thick vapor mingled
with spray which hung over the surface of the ocean.

Whence, it may be asked, had come that plaything of the tempest? From
what part of the world did it rise? It surely could not have started
during the storm. But the storm had raged five days already, and the
first symptoms were manifested on the 18th. It cannot be doubted that
the balloon came from a great distance, for it could not have traveled
less than two thousand miles in twenty-four hours.

At any rate the passengers, destitute of all marks for their guidance,
could not have possessed the means of reckoning the route traversed
since their departure. It was a remarkable fact that, although in the
very midst of the furious tempest, they did not suffer from it. They
were thrown about and whirled round and round without feeling the
rotation in the slightest degree, or being sensible that they were
removed from a horizontal position.

Their eyes could not pierce through the thick mist which had gathered
beneath the car. Dark vapor was all around them. Such was the density
of the atmosphere that they could not be certain whether it was day or
night. No reflection of light, no sound from inhabited land, no roaring
of the ocean could have reached them, through the obscurity, while
suspended in those elevated zones. Their rapid descent alone had
informed them of the dangers which they ran from the waves. However,
the balloon, lightened of heavy articles, such as ammunition, arms, and
provisions, had risen into the higher layers of the atmosphere, to a
height of 4,500 feet. The voyagers, after having discovered that the sea
extended beneath them, and thinking the dangers above less dreadful than
those below, did not hesitate to throw overboard even their most useful
articles, while they endeavored to lose no more of that fluid, the life
of their enterprise, which sustained them above the abyss.

The night passed in the midst of alarms which would have been death to
less energetic souls. Again the day appeared and with it the tempest
began to moderate. From the beginning of that day, the 24