From midnight till 3.00 a.m. Donaldson slept as peaceful as a baby, curled up in the basket with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us slept little through the night and talked less, each absorbed in the reflections and speculations inspired by our novel experience. At the approach of dawn we had the most unique and extraordinary experience ever given to man. The balloon was sailing low in a deep valley. To the east of us the Berkshires rose steeply to summits probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under the mists of early morning and the shadows of the hills. No flush of dawn yet lit the sky. Donaldson had been consulting his watch, suddenly he rose and called, pointing eastward across the range: "Watch, boys! Look there!" He then quickly dumped overboard half the contents of a ballast bag. Flying upward like an arrow, the balloon soon shot up above the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a distant Berkshire hill, as if startled by our temerity. Shortly thereafter, when we had descended to our usual level and were running swiftly before a stiff breeze over a rocky hillside, Donaldson yelled: "Hang on, boys, for your lives!" The end of the drag rope had gotten a hitch about a large tree limb. Luckily Donaldson had seen it in time to warn us, else we had there finished our careers. We had barely time to seize the stays when the rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down, spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and myself hanging in space by our hands, and the other four on the lower side of the basket, scrambling to save themselves. Instantly, of course, the basket righted and dropped back beneath us. And then began a terrible struggle. The pressure of the wind bore us down within a hundred feet of the ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out. The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood empty, and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry. It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death. But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.