but as they rose from the earth and followed after us, whipping in the
wind, the uppermost one became a big umbrella turned inside out; the
second was half of a pumpkin; the third was a yellow soup plate; the
fourth was a poppy bloom; and the remaining three were just amber beads
of diminishing sizes.

Probably it took longer, but if you asked me I should say that not more
than two or three minutes had passed before the earth stopped slipping
away and we fetched up with a profound and disconcerting jerk. The
balloon had reached the tip of her hitch line.

She rocked and twisted and bent half double in the pangs of a fearful
tummy-ache, and at every paroxysm the car lurched in sympathy, only to
be brought up short by the pull of the taut cable; so that we two,
wedged in together as we were, nevertheless jostled each other
violently. I am a poor sailor, both by instinct and training. By
rights and by precedents I should have been violently ill on the
instant; but I did not have time to be ill.

My fellow traveler all this while was pointing out this thing and that
to me--showing how the telephone operated; how his field glasses poised
just before his eyes, being swung and balanced on a delicately adjusted
suspended pivot; telling me how on a perfectly clear day--this October
day was slightly hazy--we could see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the
Cathedral at Rheims; gyrating his hands to explain the manner in which
the horses, trotting away from us as we climbed upward, had given to the
drum on the wagon a reverse motion, so that the cable was payed out
evenly and regularly. But I am afraid I did not listen closely. My
eyes were so busy that my ears loafed on the job.