"Well, sir, we shot up about a thousand feet more, and then Jones
dropped the lunch-basket overboard by accident, and we went up nearly
four miles Conly got blue in the face, Jones fainted, and I came near
going under myself. A minute more we'd all've been dead men; but I
gave the valve a jerk, and we came down like a rocket-stick. When the
boys came to, Jones said he wanted to get out; and as we were only a
little distance from the ground, I threw out the grapnel.

"That minute a breeze struck her, and she went along at about ninety
miles an hour over some man's garden, and the grapnel caught his
grape-arbor snatched it up, and pretty soon got it tangled with the
weathercock on the Presbyterian church-steeple. I cut the rope and
left it there, and I understand that the deacons sued the owner
because he wouldn't take it down. Raised an awful fuss and sent the
sheriff after me. Trying to make scientific investigation seem like a
crime, and I working all the time like a horse to unfold the phenomena
of nature! If they had loved knowledge, they wouldn't've cared if
I'd've ripped off their old steeple and dropped it down like an
extinguisher on top of some factory chimney.

"So, when we left the grape-arbor, we went up again, and Jones got
sicker and said he must get out. So I rigged up another grapnel and
threw it over. We were just passing a farm near the river; and as the
wind was high, the grapnel tore through two fences and pulled the roof
off of a smoke-house, and then, as nothing would hold her, we swooped
into the woods, when we ran against a tree. The branches skinned
Conly's face and nearly put out my right eye, and knocked four teeth
out of Jones' mouth. It was the most exciting and interesting voyage
I ever made in my life; and I was just beginning to get some