when to cut the basket and jump. I tell you we've been over land for the
last half hour. Come on, old chap, I honestly advise you to jump too."

I almost yielded, but some instinct seemed to hold me back. The thought
that he might think I was deserting him, the suspicion that he
suspected I was a little afraid of the drop, nearly drove me over the
edge of the basket with him. I felt a brute for hanging back, but in my
heart I felt just as certain he was jumping too soon as he felt that I
was waiting too long. So I shook his hand, and over he went; I had one
glimpse of something dark below me, and then the mist swallowed him up.
Rutherford was gone, and I may as well say now that not a sign of him
was ever seen again.

If you want to know what loneliness--real horrifying loneliness--is like,
I know no better recipe than drifting through a fog in a balloon, with
your only companion gone, and not the faintest belief in your heart that
you are within a hundred miles of any square inch of earth. I almost
think the fact that the balloon was steadily sinking and that sooner or
later I should have to leap from it too was the one thing that kept my
spirits anyways up to the mark. The prospect of even the most desperate
action was better than interminably facing that clammy void.

Though the chance of making land seemed to me infinitesimally remote by
this time, yet in case I had such almost inconceivable luck, it was well
to make some preparations for having a run for my money in an enemy
country. I took off my uniform coat, transferring everything I wanted to
keep from its pockets to those of my oilskin. I then put this on and
buttoned it up, and of course I took off my cap.

And then I smoked another pipe and watched the aneroid and tried not to