“The car!” was his reply; “we can cling to the network. There we can hang on in the meshes until we reach the river. Quick! quick!” And these daring men did not hesitate a moment to avail themselves of this last desperate means of escape. They clutched the network, as the doctor directed, and Joe, holding on by one hand, with the other cut the cords that suspended the car; and the latter dropped to the ground just as the balloon was sinking for the last time. “Hurrah! hurrah!” shouted the brave fellow exultingly, as the _Victoria_, once more relieved, shot up again to a height of three hundred feet. The Talabas spurred their horses, which now came tearing on at a furious gallop; but the balloon, falling in with a much more favorable wind, shot ahead of them, and was rapidly carried toward a hill that stretched across the horizon to the westward. This was a circumstance favorable to the aëronauts, because they could rise over the hill, while Al-Hadji’s horde had to diverge to the northward in order to pass this obstacle. The three friends still clung to the network. They had been able to fasten it under their feet, where it had formed a sort of swinging pocket. Suddenly, after they had crossed the hill, the doctor exclaimed: “The river! the river! the Senegal, my friends!” And about two miles ahead of them, there was indeed the river rolling along its broad mass of water, while the farther bank, which was low and fertile, offered a sure refuge, and a place favorable for a descent. “Another quarter of an hour,” said Ferguson, “and we are saved!” But it was not to happen thus; the empty balloon descended slowly upon a tract almost entirely bare of vegetation. It was made up of long slopes and stony plains, a few bushes and some coarse grass, scorched by the sun. The _Victoria_ touched the ground several times, and rose again, but her rebound was diminishing in height and length. At the last one, it caught by the upper part of the network in the lofty branches of a baobab, the only tree that stood there, solitary and alone, in the midst of the waste. “It’s all over,” said Kennedy. “And at a hundred paces only from the river!” groaned Joe. The three hapless aëronauts descended to the ground, and the doctor drew his companions toward the Senegal. At this point the river sent forth a prolonged roaring; and when Ferguson reached its bank, he recognized the falls of Gouina. But not a boat, not a living creature was to be seen. With a breadth of two thousand feet, the Senegal precipitates itself for a height of one hundred and fifty, with a thundering reverberation. It ran, where they saw it, from east to west, and the line of rocks that barred its course extended from north to south. In the midst of the falls, rocks of strange forms started up like huge ante-diluvian animals, petrified there amid the waters. The impossibility of crossing this gulf was self-evident, and Kennedy could not restrain a gesture of despair.