Then came a strong jerk upon the latch, and in an instant, the great balloon shot upward with a side-long swirl, like a wounded serpent. They saw their flag clinging flat down against the flag-staff, while a torrent of gas rushed down upon them through the aperture in the balloon above their heads, and continued to pour down into the car for a length of time that would have suffocated them but for the judgmatic provision of the little balloon of atmospheric air, to the mouth-pieces of which their own mouths were fixed, as they crouched down at the bottom of the car. Of Mr. Cocking's fate, or the result of his experiment, they had not the remotest knowledge. They only knew the parachute was gone! The termination of Mr. Cocking's experiment is well known. For a few seconds he descended quickly, but steadily, and without swinging--as he had designed, and insisted would be the result--when, suddenly, those who were watching with glasses below, saw the parachute lean on one side--then give a lurch to the other--then the large upper circle collapsed (the disastrous hollow tin-tubing having evidently broken up), and the machine entered the upper part of a cloud: in a few more seconds it was seen to emerge from the lower part of the cloud--the whole thing turned over--and then, like a closed-up broken umbrella, it shot straight down to the earth. The unfortunate, and, as most people regard him, the foolish enthusiast, was found still in the basket in which he reached the earth. He was quite insensible, but uttered a moan; and in ten minutes he was dead. Half a word in favor of parachutes. True, they are of no use "at present;" but who knows of what use such things may one day be? As to Mr. Cocking's invention, the disaster seems to be attributable to errors of detail, rather than of principle. Mr. Green is of opinion, from an examination of the _broken_ latch-cord, combined with other circumstances, which would require diagrams to describe satisfactorily, that after Mr. Cocking had failed to liberate himself the first time, he twisted the cord round his hand to give a good jerk, forgetting that in doing so, he united himself to the balloon above, as it would be impossible to disengage his hand in time. By this means he was violently jerked into his parachute, which broke the latch-cord; but the tin tube was not able to bear such a shock, and this caused so serious a fracture, in addition to its previous unsound condition, that it soon afterward collapsed. This leads one to conjecture that had the outer rim been made of strong wicker-work, or whale-bone, so as to be somewhat pliable, and that Mr. Green had liberated the parachute, instead of Mr. Cocking, it would have descended to the earth with perfect safety--skimming the air, instead of the violent oscillations of the old form of this machine. We conclude, however, with Mr. Green's laconic--that the safest parachute is a balloon.