Squinty squatted down beside one, and, with his strong teeth, he soon
had bitten a hole in the cloth. Then he took a big bite, but oh dear!

All at once he found his mouth filled with coarse sand, that gritted on
his teeth, and made the cold shivers run down his back.

"Oh, wow!" thought poor Squinty. "That's no good! Sand! I wonder if
those men eat sand?"

Of course they didn't. The sand in the bags was "ballast." The balloon
men carried it with them, and when they found the balloon coming down,
because some of the gas had leaked out of the round ball above the
basket, they would let some of the sand run out of the bags to the
ground below. This would make the balloon lighter, and it would rise
again.

"Squee! Squee! Uff! Uff!" grunted Squinty, as he wiped the sand off his
tongue on one of his legs. "I don't like that. I'm hungry."

"Why, what's the matter with the little pig?" asked one of the men,
turning around and looking at Squinty.

"He must be hungry," said the other. "See, he has bitten a hole in one
of our sand bags. Let's feed him."

"All right. Give him something to eat, but we didn't bring any pig food
along with us."

"I'll give him some bread and milk," the other man said. "We won't want
much more ourselves, for we are nearly at our last landing place."