What was I to do? For a second, I confess, I had the wildest thoughts of throwing everything portable overboard and trusting to luck to get everything started again. Then, all at once, something seemed to whisper to me: "The motor has stopped. Now the thing is no longer a flying machine but a balloon; treat it as a balloon. Find the cord that controls the valves in the top of the bag and pull those, and let all the gas escape, and come down to earth like a bird that is spent and tired." Like a man dazed I threw out my hands and gripped what ropes I could that looked at all like guide-ropes. The first I seized sent my platform heeling over sideways, and it was nothing less than a miracle that I did not fall off its inclined surface so sudden was the change of balance. Happily, the second I snatched controlled the valves in the top of the balloon. It answered to a touch, and the gas went roaring through the aperture like a typhoon. "Throw yourselves into the bottom of the cars," I shouted to the occupants of the two compartments. "We are racing towards the earth at a terrific pace. In a few seconds we shall reach it. We shall strike it gently enough because of the law of gravity and of the compensating ballonet we carry above the propeller, but I don't want one of you to get frightened and to leap out of the ship before all the gas is exhausted, otherwise we shall go careering up again, and the entire ship then will fall and dash itself and us into pieces. Trust to its steady collapse." And seizing an anchor that was fastened to the guide-rails of the platform I flung this over the side, and then crouched myself on a kind of huge buoy that hung just above the platform, through which all the different ropes of the machine seemed to pass. Fortunately, everybody was too impressed by the way in which I had guided the ship in the first instance to have noticed how badly I had managed in the second in stopping the use of the motor, and so at my words they dropped down amongst the ballast in the bottom of the cars, and with teeth clenched and hands gripping the framework they awaited the inevitable crash. Down--down--down we went--down into space! The clouds shot past us as though they were driven out of our path by some tornado. The wind roared in our ears. We caught sight of the earth, and it rushed up to meet us as if it would there and then pulverise us into a million atoms. Next instant everything appeared to change like magic. Instead of one wild, dizzy, headlong flight to the ground we seemed to be upborne on some mighty pinions that were moving with great force but steadiness as we dropped, tired and glad, into our native sphere.