Page 15 of 194 CHAPTER THIRD. - Five Weeks in a Balloon

"If passing over it were the only question!" interposed Kennedy; "but passing high up in the air, doctor, there's the rub!"

"Come, then," said the doctor, "what have I to fear? You will admit that I have taken my precautions in such manner as to be certain that my balloon will not fall; but, should it disappoint me, I should find myself on the ground in the normal conditions imposed upon other explorers. But, my balloon will not deceive me, and we need make no such calculations."

"Yes, but you must take them into view."

"No, Dick. I intend not to be separated from the balloon until I reach the western coast of Africa. With it, every thing is possible; without it, I fall back into the dangers and difficulties as well as the natural obstacles that ordinarily attend such an expedition: with it, neither heat, nor torrents, nor tempests, nor the simoom, nor unhealthy climates, nor wild animals, nor savage men, are to be feared! If I feel too hot, I can ascend; if too cold, I can come down. Should there be a mountain, I can pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it; a river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a torrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! I can speed onward with the rapidity of a tornado, sometimes at the loftiest heights, sometimes only a hundred feet above the soil, while the map of Africa unrolls itself beneath my gaze in the great atlas of the world."

Even the stubborn Kennedy began to feel moved, and yet the spectacle thus conjured up before him gave him the vertigo. He riveted his eyes upon the doctor with wonder and admiration, and yet with fear, for he already felt himself swinging aloft in space.

"Come, come," said he, at last. "Let us see, Samuel. Then you have discovered the means of guiding a balloon?"

"Not by any means. That is a Utopian idea."

"Then, you will go--"

"Whithersoever Providence wills; but, at all events, from east to west."

"Why so?"

"Because I expect to avail myself of the trade-winds, the direction of which is always the same."

"Ah! yes, indeed!" said Kennedy, reflecting; "the trade-winds--yes--truly--one might--there's something in that!"

"Something in it--yes, my excellent friend--there's EVERY THING in it. The English Government has placed a transport at my disposal, and three or four vessels are to cruise off the western coast of Africa, about the presumed period of my arrival. In three months, at most, I shall be at Zanzibar, where I will inflate my balloon, and from that point we shall launch ourselves."

"We!" said Dick.

"Have you still a shadow of an objection to offer? Speak, friend Kennedy."

"An objection! I have a thousand; but among other things, tell me, if you expect to see the country. If you expect to mount and descend at pleasure, you cannot do so, without losing your gas. Up to this time no other means have been devised, and it is this that has always prevented long journeys in the air."

		There are people that are not interesting and interesting people that are not funny. Benjamin Disraeli