over, and who had
gone through every possible and almost impossible adventure that a being
with two feet and no wings would encounter. It is needless to say that
he was a bold, dashing fellow, ready to dare anything and was astonished
at nothing. Pencroft at the beginning of the year had gone to Richmond
on business, with a young boy of fifteen from New Jersey, son of a
former captain, an orphan, whom he loved as if he had been his
own child. Not having been able to leave the town before the first
operations of the siege, he found himself shut up, to his great disgust;
but, not accustomed to succumb to difficulties, he resolved to escape by
some means or other. He knew the engineer-officer by reputation; he knew
with what impatience that determined man chafed under his restraint. On
this day he did not, therefore, hesitate to accost him, saying, without
circumlocution, "Have you had enough of Richmond, captain?"

The engineer looked fixedly at the man who spoke, and who added, in a
low voice,--

"Captain Harding, will you try to escape?"

"When?" asked the engineer quickly, and it was evident that this
question was uttered without consideration, for he had not yet examined
the stranger who addressed him. But after having with a penetrating
eye observed the open face of the sailor, he was convinced that he had
before him an honest man.

"Who are you?" he asked briefly.

Pencroft made himself known.

"Well," replied Harding, "and in what way do you propose to escape?"

"By that lazy balloon which is left there doing nothing, and which looks
to me as if it was waiting on purpose for us--"

There was no necessity for the sailor to finish his sentence. The
engineer understood him at once. He seized Pencroft by the arm, and
dragged him to his house. There the sailor developed his project, which
was indeed extremely simple. They risked nothing but their lives in its
execution. The hurricane was in all its violence, it is true, but so
clever and daring an engineer as Cyrus Harding knew perfectly well how
to manage a balloon. Had he himself been as well acquainted with the art
of sailing in the air as he was with the navigation of a ship, Pencroft
would not have hesitated to set out, of course taking his young friend
Herbert with him; for, accustomed to brave the fiercest tempests of the
ocean, he was not to be hindered on account of the hurricane.

Captain Harding had listened to the sailor without saying a word,
but