into space for ten or a dozen feet, and back again, fetching up against
the tight canvas with a thud which even shook me, thirty feet or more
beneath. I thought to see him dashed loose, but he clung on and
whimpered. They told me afterward, how, at the moment they were casting
off the balloon, the little fellow had torn away from his sisters,
ducked under the rope, and deliberately jumped astride the sandbag. It
has always been a wonder to me that he was not jerked off in the first
rush.

Well, I felt sick all over as I looked at him there, and I understood
why the balloon had taken longer to right itself, and why George had
called after me to ride her down. Should I cut loose with the parachute,
the bag would at once turn upside down, empty itself, and begin its
swift descent. The only hope lay in my riding her down and in the boy
holding on. There was no possible way for me to reach him. No man could
climb the slim, closed parachute; and even if a man could, and made the
mouth of the balloon, what could he do? Straight out, and fifteen feet
away, trailed the boy on his ticklish perch, and those fifteen feet were
empty space.

I thought far more quickly than it takes to tell all this, and realized
on the instant that the boy's attention must be called away from his
terrible danger. Exercising all the self-control I possessed, and
striving to make myself very calm, I said cheerily:

"Hello, up there, who are you!"

He looked down at me, choking back his tears and brightening up, but
just then the balloon ran into a cross-current, turned half around and
lay over. This set him swinging back and forth, and he fetched the