This was a cheerful thing to start with. Josiah had pictured all kinds of horrors, ending with the certainty of dropping into the sea. That they should begin with a stack of chimneys was an unexpected aggravation. Still, it might be better to get it over at once. At least, he would fall on land, and the fragments picked up would receive Christian burial.
He got in and sat in the bottom of the car. It was, he noticed, something like one of the coracles of which he had made mention in the preface to "Underground England." There was something good in that. The Romans made long journeys In the coracle. If the worst came to the worst, they might float.
Even in the anguish of his mind, he couldn't help wondering when Captain Mulberry would finish coming in. He had never before noticed how tall he was, till he found the necessity of getting out of the way of his legs as he crept between the ropes into the car.
"Let go all!" cried the captain, and Josiah felt his last hour had come. He held his breath and stuck to his hat, being under the impression that the whole affair would shoot up into the air like a rocket. He expected to be deafened by the noise of whizzing through the air, and to be half suffocated with the rush of wind. Looking over to get a last look at the nature of the soil on which he would presently fall, Josiah beheld a strange sight. As far as he knew, the balloon was motionless, while the earth was dropping rapidly from under them as if the laws of gravitation were irrevocably broken and the world was falling through space.
"Done it!" he heard the captain cry in a voice that sounded curiously remote.
"Done what?" said Josiah, anxiously looking up.
"Why, the chimney-stack. Just cleared it by half a foot. I didn't like to say much about it, but it was a pretty near touch-and-go affair. That's the worst of filling a balloon. You must do it near a gasworks, and there's sure to be a stack of chimneys at hand."
It seemed but a moment since Josiah had heard the captain call out "Let go all," and there they were in space a thousand feet above the level of the land, sailing calmly along in bright warm sunlight, and with no more motion perceptible than if they were still sitting in the room in King Street—that cherished apartment which Josiah felt his eye would never light on more.
"This won't do," said the captain sternly; "we've got in the wrong current, and instead of going out to sea we are going inland. In half an hour we'll be at Canterbury."
"I have heard Canterbury's a very nice old town," said Josiah. "It wouldn't be a bad place to stop at; and if the wind's contrary to-day, it might be right to-morrow."