What followed is best represented by the partially remembered words of the aeronaut himself, as shadowed forth in the memorandum already referred to. "As we rose above the metropolis, and its mighty mass began to melt into indistinctness, my companion, whose bearing and manner had hitherto most favorably impressed me, began to manifest symptoms of great uneasiness. As we were passing over Hanwell, dimly seen among the extended suburbs of the great city, his anxiety seemed to increase in an extraordinary degree. Pointing, with trembling finger, in that immediate direction, he said: "'Can they _see us_ from THERE? can they _reach_ us in any way? can they telegraph us?--CAN they, I say?' "Surprised at the excitement, and at the abrupt alarm of one who had been so remarkably cool and self-possessed at starting, I replied: "'Certainly not, my dear sir; we are half a mile from the earth, at least.' "'Ah, ha! then I am safe! they can't catch me _now_! I escaped from them only this morning!' "With a vague sense of some impending evil, I asked: "'Escaped!--how!--from where?' "'From the lunatic asylum! They thought I was crazed, and sent me there to be confined. Crazed! Why, there's not a man in London so sane as I am, and they knew it. It was a trick, sir--a trick! A trick to get my estate! But I'll be even with 'em! _I'll_ show 'em! _I'll_ thwart em!' "Good Heavens! I was now a mile from the earth, with a madman for my companion!--in a frail vessel, where the utmost caution and coolness were necessary, and where the least irregularity or carelessness would send us, through the intervening space with the speed of thought, to lie, crushed and bleeding masses of unrecognizable humanity, upon the earth. "But I had not long to think of even this apparently inevitable fate; for my companion had seized upon the sand-bags, and, one after another, was throwing them over the side of the car. "'Hold! rash man!' I exclaimed: 'what would you do? You are endangering both our lives!' "All this time the balloon was ascending with such rapidity, that the rush of the air through the net-work was like the wild whistling of the wind in the cordage of a ship under bare poles, in a gale at sea. "'What do I _do_?' repeated the madman; 'I am getting away! I am going to the moon!--I am going to the moon!--ha! ha! They can't catch us in the moon!' "He had exhausted nearly all the ballast except what was under or near me, and we were rising at such an astounding speed that I expected every moment that the balloon would burst from the increasing expansion, when I observed him loosening his garments and taking off his coat. "'It's two hundred thousand miles _now_ to the moon!' said he, 'and we must throw over some more ballast or we shan't be home till morning.' "So saying he tore off his coat and threw it over--next his waistcoat--and was fumbling at his pantaloons, evidently for a similar purpose. But a new thought seemed to strike him: