"What do you ride?" asked the captain, looking him up and down, as if
either about to measure him for a suit of clothes, or considering where
he could most advantageously plant a blow from his ox-hoof-like fist.

"A pony--at least, I used to ride a pony when I was at home: but that is
a long time ago, and I have not ridden much since."

"I mean, what do you weigh," said the captain, laughing.

"A little over ten stone."

"Is it possible! why, I pull the scales at seventeen stun. I'd give
something to be your weight. Think of the ballast you might take up with
you!"

"Is that an important thing?" Josiah asked, his old instinct of gaining
knowledge manifesting itself.

"It's simply everything. That's how I managed to get over to the
Orkneys. These fellows that go up in balloons which they fit up like
first-floor rooms, and take everything with them except a feather bed,
don't know anything about it. They go fumbling around with a few pounds
of ballast, and when they get into a wrong current there they stick.
Now, between you and me, Mr. Smith, I don't mind telling you my secret
of successful ballooning. Take as much ballast as you can carry, and
when you get stuck in a calm or carried off by a wrong current, out goes
your ballast, up you shoot, get into another current, and there you are.
Ten stun!" he murmured, gazing wistfully upon the spare figure of his
host. "There ought to be a good deal done with that. Tell you what, old
chappie, you shall come with me to-morrow."

Josiah had been a few moments ago possessed with a burning desire to go
up in a balloon, but at these words the fire went out and he felt a cold
chill steal over his body. Still, he would like to go; but not
to-morrow. If it were next month or next week it would be different. But
to-morrow was so sudden.

"I rather fancy I have an engagement to-morrow," he said, producing his
pocket diary and anxiously gazing on it in the month of December.

"Nonsense!" said the captain, laying his large hand on Josiah's
shoulder, conveying to him an impression that if he pleased he could
take him up, put him in his coat-tail pocket, walk off, and think no
more about him till he landed him in a balloon. "You've no engagement,
and if you had you couldn't find it by holding your book upside down.
You come along with me. There's not the slightest danger, and it's not
every man who has crossed the Channel in a balloon."

"The Channel!" cried Josiah feebly. He