But he
was not without susceptibility to the allurement of a quiet dinner in
Paris, and began to feel the exhilaration of having accomplished a
perilous feat, to which he would certainly drag in some reference in his
great work. It would be difficult, as he was as far as possible remote
from Underground England. But it might be worked in some antithetical
sentence.
After they had sailed for the space of ten minutes the captain, who had
been throwing out bits of paper which they left far behind, suddenly
said a bad word.
"We are becalmed," he continued, and truly the bits of paper flung out
floated idly round the balloon. "We must get out of this."
He cast out the ballast, bag after bag, and higher still they soared.
Nevertheless, whenever they flung out the bits of paper, they floated
here and there, some dropping back into the car.
"There goes our last bag of ballast," said the captain, "and may luck go
with it. We are lost men unless it takes us into another current, which
let us hope won't be coming from the East and carry us out into the
Atlantic."
Up again they mounted, how many feet Josiah didn't know, but he was
sensible of a sudden iciness in the atmosphere, a tingling of the blood
at his finger ends, and a strong disposition to bleed at the nose. The
captain threw out some more bits of paper.
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