for at the end of
our tug at the anchor rope, I found| had been kneeling very precisely
in the middle of pie No. 2, and had contrived to absorb most of it into
the knees of my trousers. Thus at the end of the day, come to Saratoga
after all shops were closed, I had to run the gauntlet of the porch and
office crowd of visitors at the United States Hotel in a condition that
only needed moccasins and a war bonnet to make me a tolerable imitation
of an Indian.

We remained aloft at an altitude of one or two and one half miles for
three hours and a half, stayed there until the silence became
intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have
been music to our ears. Here was _absolute silence_, the silence of
the grave and death, a silence never to be experienced by living man in
any terrestrial condition.

Occasionally the misty clouds in which we hung enshrouded parted
beneath us and gave us glimpses of distant earth, opened and disclosed
landscapes of infinite beauty set in grey nebulous frames. Once we
passed above a thunderstorm, saw the lightning play beneath us, felt
our whole fabric tremble at its shock--and were glad enough when we had
left it well behind. Seen from a great height, the earth looked to be
a vast expanse of dark green velvet, sometimes shaded to a deeper hue
by cloudlets floating beneath the sun, splashed here with the silver
and there with the gold garniture reflected from rippling waters.

Toward noon we descended beneath the region of clouds into the realm of
light and life, and found ourselves hovering above the Mountain House
of the Catskills. And thereabouts we drifted in cross-currents until
nearly 4.00 p.m., when a heavy southerly gale struck us and swept us
rapidly northward past Albany at a pace faster than I have ever
travelled on a railway.

We still had ballast enough left to assure ten or twelve hours more
travel. But we did not like our course. The prospects were that we
would end our voyage in the wilderness two hundred or more miles north
of Ottawa. So we rose to 12,500 feet, seeking an easterly or westerly
current, but without avail. We could not escape the southerly gale.
Prudence, therefore, dictated a landing before nightfall. Landing in
the high gale was both difficult and dangerous, and was not
accomplished until we were all much bruised and scratched in the oak
thicket Donaldson chose for our descent.

Thus the first voyage of the good airship