But here we are--still above the clouds! We may assume that you would not like to be "let off" in a parachute, even on the improved principle; we will therefore prepare for descending with the balloon. This is a work requiring great skill and care to effect safely, so as to alight on a suitable piece of ground, and without any detriment to the voyagers, the balloon, gardens, crops, &c.
The valve-line is pulled!--out rushes the gas from the top of the balloon--you see the flag fly upward--down through the clouds you sink faster and faster--lower and lower. Now you begin to see dark masses below--there's the Old Earth again!--the dark masses now discover themselves to be little forests, little towns, tree-tops, house-tops--out goes a shower of sand from the ballast-bags, and our descent becomes slower--another shower, and up we mount again, in search of a better spot to alight upon. Our guardian aeronaut gives each of us a bag of ballast, and directs us to throw out its contents when he calls each of us by name, and in such quantities only as he specifies. Moreover, no one is suddenly to leap out of the balloon, when it touches the earth; partly because it may cost him his own life or limbs, and partly because it would cause the balloon to shoot up again with those who remained, and so make them lose the advantage of the good descent already gained, if nothing worse happened. Meantime, the grapnel-iron has been lowered, and dangling down at the end of a strong rope of a hundred and fifty feet long. It is now trailing over the ground. Three bricklayers' laborers are in chase of it. It catches upon a bank--it tears its way through. Now the three bricklayers are joined by a couple of fellows in smock-frocks, a policeman, five boys, followed by three little girls, and, last of all, a woman with a child in her arms, all running, shouting, screaming, and yelling, as the grapnel-iron and rope go trailing and bobbing over the ground before them. At last the iron catches upon a hedge--grapples with its roots; the balloon is arrested, but struggles hard; three or four men seize the rope, and down we are hauled, and held fast till the aerial Monster, with many a gigantic heave and pant, surrenders at discretion, and begins to resign its inflated robust proportions. It subsides in irregular waves--sinks, puffs, flattens--dies to a mere shriveled skin; and being folded up, like Peter Schlemil's shadow, is put into a bag, and stowed away at the bottom of the little car it so recently overshadowed with its buoyant enormity.