r lives.

"It had been my intention to sail directly over the heads of the
attacking party and drop down into Napoleon's camp the next morning,
but unfortunately for my calculations, a heavy wind came up in the
night and the balloon was caught by a northerly blast, and blown into
Africa, where, poised in the air directly over the desert of Sahara,
we encountered a dead calm, which kept us stalled up for two miserable
weeks."

"Why didn't you come down?" asked the Twins, "wasn't the elevator
running?"

"We didn't dare," explained the Baron, ignoring the latter part of the
question. "If we had we'd have wasted a great deal of our gas, and our
condition would have been worse than ever. As I told you we were
directly over the centre of the desert. There was no way of getting
out of it except by long and wearisome marches over the hot, burning
sands with the chances largely in favour of our never getting out
alive. The only thing to do was to stay just where we were and wait
for a favouring breeze. This we did, having to wait four mortal weeks
before the air was stirred."

"You said two weeks a minute ago, Uncle Munch," said the Twins
critically.

"Two? Hem! Well, yes it was two, now that I think of it. It's a
natural mistake," said the Baron stroking his mustache a little
nervously. "You see two weeks in a balloon over a vast desert of sand,
with nothing to do but whistle for a breeze, is equal to four weeks
anywhere else. That is, it seems so. Anyhow, two weeks or four,
whichever it was, the breeze came finally, and along about midnight
left us stranded again directly over an Arab encampment near Wady
Halfa. It was a more perilous position really, than the first, because
the moment the Arabs caught sight of us they began to make frantic
efforts to get us down. At first we simply laughed them to scorn and
made faces at them, because as far as we could see, we were safely out
of reach. This enraged them and they apparently made up their minds to
kill us if they could. At first their idea was to get us down alive
and sell us as slaves, but our jeers changed all that, and what should
they do but whip out a lot of guns and begin to pepper us.

"'I'll settle them in a minute,' I said to myself, and set about
loading my own gun. Would you believe it, I found that my last bullet
was the one with which I had saved the balloon from the Prussian
shot?"

"Mercy, how careless of you, Uncle Munch!" said one of the Twins.
"Wha