“What happens then?” asked Ned.
“You come down in a hurry, that’s all. It’s only used for emergency. Well, after we get the bag laid out the way we want it, and the gas pipes connected, we lay the cordage or net over it. Then the balloon begins to fill. We hook on the sand bags, all round the edge of the netting, so’s to keep her steady as she fills. When the gas begins to lift the bags a bit we hook ’em on lower down in the netting, and so on, until the balloon is full. Then we hitch on the basket, put in the proper amount of ballast, and it’s all ready to go up.”
“You let it go up a thousand feet and then pull it down by the wire cable?” asked Bart.
“That’s it. It can make a lot of trips during a day with one filling of gas. When it begins to collapse we put in more.”
“Suppose it should break away?” asked Ned.
“It never has happened with this outfit, though of course it might. I had one get away once.”
“What happened?”
“Why my assistant and myself were in it. We didn’t get scared, as we were old hands at the business. We just pulled the valve cord and let ourselves down easy. The bad part of it was it was at the seashore and we came down in the ocean. We lost the balloon but we saved our lives.”
“Did you ever have to pull the ripping cord?” asked Bart.