transpired that he had thrown out of the car all the provisions with which we had been supplied for our journey.

The discovery took the smiles out of Phillip's merry face.

"You'll have to hold on a bit, little woman," said he. "When we get to a way-station or an hotel, we'll show the refreshment contractors what sort of appetites are to be found up above."

Then I asked them where we were going; whereabouts we had got to; and why we did not descend. Which elicited the fact that Kenneth had thrown away the instruments by which the aeronaut informs himself of his location and the direction of his course. For a long time Phillip playfully put me off in my petition to be restored to terra firma, but at last it came out that the valve-line being cut we could not descend, and that the balloon must speed on, mounting higher and higher, until it would probably burst in the extreme tension of the air.

"Soon after that," said Phillip, with a grim, hard laugh, "we shall be back on the earth again."

We found it difficult to enjoy the trip after this prospect was made clear. Nor did conversation flow very freely. The hours dragged slowly on, and our sufferings increased.

At last Phillip made up his mind to attempt a desperate remedy. What it was he would not tell me, but, kissing me tenderly, he made me lie down and covered my head with his coat.

Then he took off his boots, and then the car creaked and swayed, and suddenly I felt he was gone out of it. He had told me not to look out from under his coat; but how could I obey him? I did look, and I saw him climbing like a cat up the round, hard side of the balloon, clinging with hands and feet to the netting that covered it.

As he mounted, the balloon swayed over with his weight until it was right above him and he could hardly hold on to the cords with his toes and his fingers. Still he crept on, and still the great silken fabric heeled over, as if it resented his boldness and would crush him.

Once his foothold gave way, and he dropped to his full length, retaining only his hand-grip of the thin cords, which nearly cut his fingers in two under the strain of his whole weight. I thought he was gone; I thought I had lost him for ever. It seemed impossible he could keep his hold, and even if he did the weak netting must give way. It stretched down where he grasped it into a bag form and increased his distance from the balloon, so that he could not reach with his feet, although he drew his body up and made many a desperate effort to do so.

"CLINGING WITH HANDS AND FEET TO THE NETTING."

But while I watched him in an agony of powerlessness to help, the balloon slowly regained the perpendicular, and just as Phillip seemed at the point of exhaustion his feet caught once more in the netting, and, with his arms thrust through the meshes and twisted in and out for security, while his strong teeth also gripped the cord, I saw my husband in comparative safety once more. I turned to relieve my pent-up feelings to Kenneth, but he was not in the car—only his boots. He had seen Phillip's peril, and climbed up on the other side of the balloon to restore the balance.

But now the wicked thing served them another trick; it slowly lay over on its side under the weight of the two men, who were now poised like panniers upon the extreme convexity of the silk. This was very perilous for both, but the change of position gave them a little rest, and Phillip shouted instructions round to Kenneth to slowly work his way back to the car, while he (Phillip) would mount to the top of the balloon, the surface of which would be brought under him by Kenneth's weight. It was my part to make them balance each other. This I did by watching the tendency of the balloon, and telling Kenneth to move to right or left as I saw it become necessary. It was very difficult for us all. The great fabric wobbled about most capriciously, sometimes with a sudden turn that took us all by surprise, and would have jerked every one of us into space, had we not all been clinging fast to the cordage.

At last Phillip shouted:—

"Get ready to slip down steadily into the car."

"I am ready," replied Kenneth.

"Then go!" came from Phillip.

"Easy does it! Steady! Don't hurry! Get right down into the middle of the car, both of you, and keep quite still."

We did as he told us, and as Kenneth joined me, we heard a faint cheer from above, and the message:—

"Safe on the top of the balloon!"

"Look, Minnie, look!" cried Kenneth; and on a cloud-bank we saw the image of our balloon with a figure sitting on the summit, which could only be Phillip Rutley.

"Take care, my dearest! take care!" I besought him.

"I'm all right as long as you two keep still," he declared; but it was not so.

After he had been up there about ten minutes trying to mend the escape-valve, so that we could control it from the car, a puff of wind came and overturned the balloon completely. In a moment the aspect of the monster was transformed into a crude resemblance to the badge of the Golden Fleece—the car with Kenneth and me in it at one end, and Phillip Rutley hanging from the other, the huge gas-bag like the body of the sheep of Colchis in the middle.

And now the balloon twisted round and round as if resolved to wrench itself from Phillip's grasp, but he held on as a brave man always does when the alternative is fight or die. The terrible difficulty he had in getting back I shudder to think of. It is needless to recount it now. Many times I thought that both men must lose their lives, and I should finish this awful voyage alone. But in the end I had my arms around Phillip's neck once more, and was thanking God for giving him back to me.

I don't think I half expressed my gratitude to poor Kenneth, who had so bravely and generously helped to save him. I wish I had said more when I look back at that time now. But my love for Phillip made me blind to everything.

Phillip was very much done up, and greatly dissatisfied with the result of his exertions; but he soon began to make the best of things, as he always did.

"I'm a selfish duffer, Minnie," said he. "All the good I've done by frightening you like this is to get myself splendidly warm."

"What, have you done nothing to the valve?"

"Didn't have time. No, Moore and I must try to get at it from below, though from what I saw before I started to go aloft, it seemed impossible."

"But we are descending."

"Eh?"

"Descending rapidly. See how fast we are diving into that cloud below!"

"It's true! We're dropping. What can it mean?"

As he spoke we were immersed in a dense white mist, which wetted us through as if we had been plunged in water. Then suddenly the car was filled with whirling snow—thick masses of snow that covered us so that we could not see each other; choked us so that we could hardly speak or breathe.

And the cold! the cold! It cut us like knives; it beat the life out of us as if with hammers.

This sudden, overwhelming horror struck us dumb. We could only cling together and pray. It was plain that there must be a rent in the silk, a large one, caused probably by the climbing of the men, a rent that might widen at any moment and reduce the balloon to ribbons.

We were being dashed along in a wild storm of wind and snow, the headlong force of which alone delayed the fate which seemed surely to await us. Where should we fall? The world beneath us was near and palpable, yet we could not distinguish any object upon it. But we fell lower and lower, until our eyes informed us all in an instant, and we exclaimed