Fleeing to the upper deck, and taking refuge in the bow, we became sensible that we were descending through the air with frightful rapidity. When the accident occurred, we were already at a low level, on the look-out for the signal at our station. This circumstance was in our favor, if anything could be, when a danger so imminent and dreadful was pressing. Land, like a hazy shadow, was just discoverable in the dim distance below us; and oh for one foot of it as a place of rest! But if it were possible to escape the flames, it was clear enough that we must be dashed in pieces against the solid earth. De Aëry was now the only one remaining in the stern. He was exposed to great peril, but refused to quit his post while it remained possible to control in any degree the motions of the vessel. The flames played about him without shaking his courage or his coolness, and broke through upon the upper deck and separated him from us with a seething hedge and whirlpool of fire. We lost sight of him, and supposed he had perished, when suddenly his voice, issuing from the midst of the furnace, rung on our ears like a trumpet. "Up the ropes! quit the ship, or you die, every man of you!" he shouted; and at the same time we discovered him emerging from the flames and smoke, and ascending the network which enveloped the balloon and connected it with the ship. We followed his example; some of our number--the more timid or the more daring, it would be difficult to say which--continuing the ascent until they had reached the upper surface of the gas-chamber, and placed its entire fragile bulk between them and the hazard they most dreaded. The momentary refuge afforded by these upper works was scarcely attained, when the bow, where we had stood but a minute before, and the whole hull of the "Flying Cloud" with it, blended together in one mass of surging fire. The appearance in the heavens of this strange sight, to a watcher at some _rancho_, or in the not distant city of San Francisco, if such there were, must have afforded a more vivid illustration of the fall of a blazing star or meteoric wonder than astronomer has ever put on record. But I delay the catastrophe. Land and water soon became distinguishable from each other beneath us, and hills from valleys, and forests from bare plains. There was little wind, except the fierce currents rushing upward, produced by the heat of our own conflagration. This, for the time, subdued everything to itself, and, as we approached the ground, served by its direction to modify the fury of our descent. The denser lower atmosphere also contributed to the same end; and, most fortunately, when we reached the earth, and the collision came, we struck in water instead of on the land.