land breeze, which, ere he could reach the water, had carried him
a mile out to sea, and here he was only rescued after a long interval,
during which he had become much exhausted in his attempts to save his
parachute from sinking.

Early in 1892 our traveller visited South Africa with a hot air balloon,
and, fortune continuing to favour him, he subsequently returned to
Canada, and proceeded thence to the United States and Cuba. It was at
Havannah that popular enthusiasm in his favour ran so high that he was
presented with a medal by the townsfolk. It was from here also that, a
little while after, tidings of his own death reached him, together
with most gratifying obituary notices. It would seem that, after his
departure, an adventurer, attempting to personate him, met with his
death.

In November, 1897, he followed his elder brother's footsteps to the
East, and exhibited in Calcutta, Singapore, Canton, and also Hong-Kong,
where, for the first and only time in his experience, he met with
serious accident. He was about to ascend for the ordinary parachute
performance with a hot air balloon, which was being held down by
about thirty men, one among them being a Chinaman possessed of much
excitability and very long finger nails. By means of these latter the
man contrived to gouge a considerable hole in the fabric of the balloon.
Mr. Spencer, to avoid a disappointment, risked an ascent, and it was
not till the balloon had reached 600 feet that the rent developed into a
long slit, and so brought about a sudden fall to earth. Alighting on the
side of a mountain, Mr. Spencer lay helpless with a broken leg till the
arrival of some British bluejackets, who conveyed him to the nearest
surgeon, when, after due attention, he was sent home. Other remarkable
exploits, which Mr. Stanley Spencer shared with Dr. Berson and with the
writer and his daughter, will be recorded later.

CHAPTER XXIII. NEW DEPARTURES IN AEROSTATION.

After Mr. Coxwell's experiments at Aldershot in 1862 the military
balloon, as far as England was concerned, remained in abeyance for nine
long years, when the Government appointed a Commission to enquire into
its utility, and to conduct further experiments. The members of this
committee were Colonel Noble, R.E., Sir F. Abel, Captain Lee, R.E.,
assisted by Captain Elsdale, R.E., and Captain (now Colonel) Templer.
Yet another nine years, however, elapsed before much more was heard of
this modernised military