e who were holding the ropes (some thirty men) to let
go at once, and made gestures signifying danger, and that there would be
mischief if they held on longer. Many obeyed; the rest were too weak to
hold on to the ropes, and were forced to let them go. On this the
balloon bounded suddenly upwards, but my own feeling was that the earth
had dropped off from me, and was sinking fast into the open space
beneath.

This happened at the very moment that the attention of the crowd was
divided, the one half paying heed to the eager gestures of those coming
from Mr. Nosnibor's house, and the other to the exclamations from myself.
A minute more and Arowhena would doubtless have been discovered, but
before that minute was over, I was at such a height above the city that
nothing could harm me, and every second both the town and the crowd
became smaller and more confused. In an incredibly short time, I could
see little but a vast wall of blue plains rising up against me, towards
whichever side I looked.

At first, the balloon mounted vertically upwards, but after about five
minutes, when we had already attained a very great elevation, I fancied
that the objects on the plain beneath began to move from under me. I did
not feel so much as a breath of wind, and could not suppose that the
balloon itself was travelling. I was, therefore, wondering what this
strange movement of fixed objects could mean, when it struck me that
people in a balloon do not feel the wind inasmuch as they travel with it
and offer it no resistance. Then I was happy in thinking that I must now
have reached the invariable trade wind of the upper air, and that I
should be very possibly wafted for hundreds or even thousands of miles,
far from Erewhon and the Erewhonians.

Already I had removed the wrappings and freed Arowhena; but I soon
covered her up with them again, for it was already very cold, and she was
half stupefied with the strangeness of her position.

And now began a time, dream-like and delirious, of which I do not suppose
that I shall ever recover a distinct recollection. Some things I can
recall--as that we were ere long enveloped in vapour which froze upon my
moustache and whiskers; then comes a memory of sitting for hours and
hours in a thick fog, hearing no sound but my own breathing and
Arowhena's (for we hardly spoke) and seeing no sight but the car beneath
us and beside us, and the dark balloon above.

Perhaps the most painful feeling