I got in the basket and looked things over, and jumped out and in several times, and asked questions of the two men who were to go up in it, and they seemed pleased that I was not afraid, and they asked me if I thought my father would make a kick if I was killed or lost at sea, or anything, and I told them from my last conversation with Pa I thought he would take it as a kindness if they should find it convenient to spill me out somewhere or lose me, and when they landed, if they could make affidavit that I had been permanently disposed of, like a mess of kittens under water in a bag, with a stone in it, that Pa would be willing to cough up quite a premium.
That held them for a little while, and then they asked me who I was, anyway, and when I told them that I was the only original “Peck’s Bad Boy,” they said that from their recollection of my tricks on my father they could readily see how a fatality might be a blessing, and they seemed relieved of any responsibility, and we went to work to get things in the basket, and they instructed me what I was to do.
The basket was about nine feet square, and it had more things in it than a delicatessen store.
At about ten o’clock in the morning, with thousands of people watching the balloons, they began to cut loose and go shooting into the air, and it was a race.
The man told me that the balloon that went the farthest from St. Louis before being compelled to land would get the prize, and I began to feel anxious to have our balloon win.
I watched those that started first, and they went up so far I could only see little specks in the sky, and I thought of balloons I had seen go up on fair grounds, where a girl sat on a trapeze bar, and jumped off, and a parachute opened and took her safely to the ground, and I looked around our balloon for a parachute, but there was none, and I wondered what would happen if the balloon came down, with its gas all escaped, like the fair ground balloon, and there is where I came the nearest to weakening and climbing out, but I thought if I did I would be a coward like my chum, and then I thought if those two grown men, with families depending on them for support, were going up, they were not doing it for any suicidal purpose, and I could go if they could, and when the boss man said, “Now, Bub, if you want to stay ashore, this is your last chance,” I said, “Your little Hennery is ready to go where you go, and you can’t tie her loose any too soon to suit me,” and he patted me on the head and said, “Hennery, you sure are game,” and then all was ready and he said to them to let go. My heart went up and rubbed against my palate, and the balloon made a jump like a horse going over a five foot fence, advertising a brand of whiskey, and we shot up into the air, the people yelling, and I saw my chum sitting on a dray, driving a mule, and I thought of the difference between a brave boy and a mucker like my chum, the houses began to look smaller, until St. Louis looked like play houses, with a ribbon of gray on the side of it, which was the river.
The boss looked at a machine and said we were five miles high, and I thought how I had always enjoyed high life, and I was trying to get my heart swallowed down where it belonged.
The balloon basket was as steady as a house, and I got up and looked over the side of the basket, and it seemed awful, cause I had never been higher than the top of a twenty story building before, and I began to weep tears, and the air seemed queer, and I was just going to faint when the boss told me to open a can of lobsters, and I woke up.