To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen or fifteen
thousand feet--and to that height Bert Smallways presently rose
is like nothing else in human experience. It is one of the
supreme things possible to man. No flying machine can ever
better it. It is to pass extraordinarily out of human things.
It is to be still and alone to an unprecedented degree. It is
solitude without the suggestion of intervention; it is calm
without a single irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No
sound reaches one of all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is
clear and sweet beyond the thought of defilement. No bird, no
insect comes so high. No wind blows ever in a balloon, no breeze
rustles, for it moves with the wind and is itself a part of the
atmosphere. Once started, it does not rock nor sway; you cannot
feel whether it rises or falls. Bert felt acutely cold, but he
wasn't mountain-sick; he put on the coat and overcoat and gloves
Butteridge had discarded--put them over the "Desert Dervish"
sheet that covered his cheap best suit--and sat very still for a
long, time, overawed by the new-found quiet of the world.
Above him was the light, translucent, billowing globe of shining
brown oiled silk and the blazing sunlight and the great deep blue
dome of the sky.

Below, far below, was a torn floor of sunlit cloud slashed by
enormous rents through which he saw the sea.

If you had been watching him from below, you would have seen his
head, a motionless little black knob, sticking out from the car
first of all for a long time on one side, and then vanishing to
reappear after a time at some other point.