The audacious aëronaut then decided to make an ascension and deliberately burst the balloon, by confining the gas in it and throwing out ballast. But first he tried the experiment on a dog, taking him up 4,000 feet, dropping him in a small collapsed balloon and watching him settle slowly to earth. Then rising to an altitude of 13,000 feet he stood debating whether to follow the example of the dog. The balloon quickly ended the question by exploding at the top. The hydrogen rushed out with a tempestuous sound, and the great vessel sank swiftly with a moaning noise of the wind in her rigging. In a few seconds the bag was empty and collapsed on the top of the net thus forming an effective parachute. After an exciting fall of more than two miles, Mr. Wise landed on a farm, with a lively thump, which overturned the basket, and threw him sprawling on the ground. It was fine sport; he decided at once to advertise a repetition of it, and thus was led by degrees to the invention of the ripping panel.[7] Mr. Wise firmly believed that a steady wind from west to east prevails at a height of two miles. He wished to use this for long voyages, and even contemplated crossing the Atlantic; for he trusted his varnish to hold hydrogen a fortnight if need be. Accordingly in 1873 the New York _Daily Graphic_ paid the cost of a balloon to carry him and two others on that hazardous voyage. The bag had a capacity of 400,000 cubic feet, but was too frail in construction to receive Mr. Wise’s approval, and actually burst during inflation when slightly more than three fourths full. Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wise, he never had an opportunity to attempt the trans-Atlantic voyage; but on one occasion he enjoyed a memorable cruise in the great west wind which so took his fancy. Rising from St. Louis on June 23, 1859, he sailed northeastwardly for twenty hours, and landed at Henderson, N. Y., having traversed a distance of 809 miles, measured directly. But in attempting another long voyage with two companions, in September, 1879, he passed over Lake Michigan, where all were drowned.