s sucked up until half the netting stood empty,
and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace
of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry.

It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death.
But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution
possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and
relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.

Happily the struggle was brief. The limb that held us snapped, and the
balloon sprang forward in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and
tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-lash. But we were free,
safe, and our stout vessel soon settled down to the velocity of the
wind.

By this time we all were beginning to feel hungry, for we had supped
the night before in mid-air from a lunch basket that held more
delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and
began looking for a likely place. At last he chose a little village,
which upon near approach we learned lay in Columbia County of our own
good State.

We called to two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather
high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as
had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air
in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again
seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a
section or two of the fence fly into the air as if in pursuit of us.

Presently the heat of the rising sun expanded our gas and sent us up
again 2,000 feet, making breakfast farther off than ever. Thus, it
being clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas,
Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely
landed on mother earth, but not until after we had received a pretty
severe pounding about, for such a high wind blew that the anchor was
slow in holding.

This landing was made at 5.24 a.m. on the farm of John W. Coons near
the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson City, and about one
hundred and thirty miles from New York.

Here our pilot decided our vessel must be lightened of two men, and
thus the lot drawn the night before compelled us to part, regretfully,
with MacKeever of the _Herald_, and Austin of the _World_. Ford,
however, owing allegiance to an afternoon paper, the _Graphic_, and
always bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw a