have as in such circumstances they always will.
They were incredulous, and presently grew troublesome. In vain the
harnessing of the car was proceeded with as though all were well. For
all was not well, and when the aeronaut stepped into his car with only
fifteen pounds of sand and a few instruments he must have done so with
much misgiving. Still, he had friends around who might have been useful
had they been less eager to help. But these simply crowded round him,
giving him no elbow room, nor opportunity for trying the "lift" of his
all-too-empty globe. Moreover, some would endeavour to throw the machine
upward, while others as strenuously strove to keep it down, and at last
the former party prevailed, and the balloon, being fairly cast into the
air, grazed a neighbouring chimney and then plunged into an adjacent
plot, not, however, before the distracted traveller had flung away
all his little stock of sand. There now was brief opportunity for free
action, and to the first bystander who came running up Wise gave
the task of holding the car in check. To the next he handed out his
instruments, his coat, and also his boots, hoping thus to get away; but
his chance had not yet come, for once again the crowd swarmed round him,
keeping him prisoner with good-natured but mistaken interference, and
drowning his voice with excited shouting. Somehow, by word and gesture,
he gave his persecutors to understand that he wished to speak, and then
he begged them only to give him a chance, whereupon the crowd fell
back, forming a ring, and leaving only one man holding the car. It was
a moment of suspense, for Wise calculated that he had only parted with
some eighteen pounds since his first ineffectual start from the filling
ground; but it was enough, and in another moment he was sailing up
clear above the crowd. So great, as has been already shewn, is often
the effect of parting with the last few pounds of dead weight in a
well-balanced balloon.

Such was the first "send off" of the future great balloonist, destined
to become the pioneer in aeronautics on the far side of the Atlantic.
The balloon ascended to upwards of a mile, floating gradually away, but
at its highest point it reached a conflict of currents, causing eddies
from which Wise escaped by a slight decrease of weight, effected by
merely cutting away the wreaths of flowers that were tied about his car.
A further small substitute for ballast he extemporised in the metal tube
i