A few seconds later the august President arrived. Mr. Josephus Ilam was tall, like his partner, but much stouter. He had, indeed, almost the inflated appearance which one observes constantly in the drivers of brewers’ drays; even his fingers bulged. His age was fifty, ten years more than that of Carpentaria, and it was probably ten years since he had seen his own feet. Finally, he was clean-shaven, with areas of blue on his chin and cheeks like the sea on a map, and his hair--what remained of it--seemed to be hesitating between black and grey. “What’s the matter?” he asked of Carpentaria. “Oh, I thought I would just like to make the first ascent with you alone,” Carpentaria answered, and added, smiling, “I have something to show you up there.” His hand indicated the firmament, and his peculiar smile indicated that he took Ilam’s consent for granted. Ilam sighed obesely, and agreed. He did not care to argue before members of the staff. Nevertheless, the futility of ascending to the skies on this, the opening day, when the colossal organism of the show cried aloud for continual supervision on earth, was sufficiently clear to his mind. He climbed gingerly over the edge of the wickerwork car, which had a circumference of thirty feet, with a protected aperture in the middle, and Carpentaria followed him. “Let go,” said Carpentaria, gleefully. “Let go!” he repeated with impatience, when the balloon was arrested at a height of about ten feet. “Right sir,” responded briskly the head balloonist. There appeared to have been some altercation between the balloonists. The day was the first of May, but the London spring had chosen to be capricious and unseasonable. Instead of the snow and frost and east wind which almost invariably accompany what is termed, with ferocious irony, the merry month, there was strong, brilliant sunshine and a perfect calm. The sun glinted and glittered on the upper surfaces of the balloon, but of course the voyagers could not perceive that. They, in fact, perceived nothing except that the entire world was gradually falling away from them. The balloon had ceased to shiver; it stood as firm as consols, while the City of Pleasure sank and sank, and the upturned faces of more than fifty thousand spectators grew tinier and tinier.