Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/494

 On and still on, with the railway line always in sight; and now we begin to fall faster, for a cold air-current has caused the gas to contract. As we come within nearer range we prepare to make another photograph. We are about to pass over a private house, with conservatories, stabling, and other out-buildings, close by where several roads converge. Another snap and we have photograph number eight.

Now, as we near Saffron Walden, we fall very low indeed. That is to say, we get to an elevation of 500 feet, which Mr. Spencer calls very low, but which strikes us as quite long enough a fall to satisfy anybody. Then we get lower still, and we can see an intelligent peasantry dropping whatever they hold and starting off towards us at the double from all directions. Our trail-rope is 200 ft. long, and presently it touches. Then, with the relief from its weight, we descend slower and slower, then the car touches, and we rise with a bounce, only to settle down again in a minute or so. And so we swing merrily along at about twenty miles an hour 150 ft. off the ground, with 50 ft. of trail-rope behind us, which, at its pace, eludes every effort of many sons of the soil to grab it. With many a joyous gibe at the top of our voices for those below we sail along, and wonder whether they understand our airy chaff or mistake it for cries of distress.

At last an agricultural gentleman in a suit of corduroy and clay manages to intercept the rope and catch it, with a yell of triumph. Mr. Spencer shouts to him to let go, but he hangs on valiantly till the rope goes taut, and thenwell, there is a hedge in the way, and for a single second we get a view of the soles of the agricultural gentleman's very large boots, and then he is sitting in a cabbage-field at the other side of the hedge, and wondering what that earthquake has done with his hat, while the rope drags away in the next field.

Now we cut off a corner of Suffolk with our trailing rope, and pull it into Cambridgeshire. The wind quiets down, and we go at something under fifteen miles an hour, as the sun sinks away in the west, and the blue of the sky in the east deepens and deepens. All this time Mr. Spencer has regulated our height by a judicious expenditure of ballast, and now we are low enough to hear the voices of the enthusiastic populace, as they rush out of door with cries of "Balloon! Balloon!"

Soon we go very slowly indeed, and can talk to the people almost as easily as from the top of an omnibus. One fine old farmer in brown gaiters attracts Mr. Spencer's attention, and we think to take a rise out of the old gentleman by asking the way to Newmarket. With an innocence which almost reconciles us to returning to the deceitful world again, he tells us that we must turn to the left; whereupon Mr. Spencer—mad wag, that Mr. Spencer—swarms up into the ring, and, seizing the neck of the balloon, whirls it round with great energy, and asks our friend if that is enough. No; just a little more, he thinks. One more whirl, and then, "All right, cap'en, now you're right!" What a delightful old gentleman!

But now the wind shifts, and we find, after all, that Newmarket is like to be our destination. It is about ten miles ahead, and as we make towards it we are confident that the good old farmer standing