He glanced down. It looked exactly as if fields and houses were rushing up to meet him. The balloon was dropping at tremendous speed.
At the same time Clifford noticed that the shadow of the balloon was swishing across the fields at almost the pace of an express train. He had dropped into a swift air current, and the rapidly deflating balloon was actually traveling at more than thirty miles an hour.
A small town loomed below, with a tall factory chimney sticking spike-like from its centre.
"If I hit that I'm a gone coon," muttered the boy, but the balloon passed far above its smoking summit, and swirled away over villas and gardens toward a wood.
Clifford saw people looking up, heard shouts of surprise and alarm, but he was past it all in a minute and swinging down toward the wood.
A fresh spasm of fright seized him as he saw the tall trees bending in the gale.
But the balloon scudded just above their leafy tops, and swooped toward a large square building, which lay in its own grounds surrounded by a high brick wall.
Even in the one flashing glance he caught of the place there was something sombre and forbidding about it. The tall gray walls, the barred windows, the dark elms, and the heavy shrubbery.
Now the balloon was flying straight for the outer wall.
With a shout of alarm Clifford scrambled wildly into the netting. Just in time. With a loud clang the iron ring struck the top of the wall. It caught a second, the whole envelope heeled over, the branches of a thick yew tore Clifford from his hold, and the last thing he remembered was the thump with which he reached the ground.