"Are you distressed, Mr. Damon?" he asked.

"Ye-yes, I-I have-some-some difficulty in breathing," was the answer.

Tom gave his friend the same advice the aeronaut had given the lad on
his first trip, and the eccentric man soon felt better.

"Bless my buttons!" he ventured to explain. "But I feel as if I had
lost several pounds of flesh, and I'm glad of it."

Mr. Sharp was busy with the motor, which needed some slight
adjustments, and Tom was in sole charge of navigating the airship. He
had lost the nervous feeling that first possessed him, and was
becoming quite an expert at meeting various currents of wind
encountered in the upper regions.

Below, the voyagers could see the earth spread out like a great map.
They could not tell their exact location now, but by calculating their
speed, which was about thirty miles an hour, Tom figured out that they
were above the town of Centreford, near where he had been attacked
once by the model thieves.

For several hours the airship kept on her way, maintaining a height of
about a mile, for when it was found that Mr. Damon could accommodate
himself to thirty-five hundred feet the elevation rudder was again
shifted to send the craft upward.

By using glasses the travelers could see crowds on the earth watching
their progress in the air, and, though airships, dirigible balloons