My knees tottered beneath me- my teeth
chattered- my hair started up on end. "The balloon, then, had
actually burst!" These were the first tumultuous ideas that hurried
through my mind: "The balloon had positively burst!- I was
falling- falling with the most impetuous, the most unparalleled
velocity! To judge by the immense distance already so quickly passed
over, it could not be more than ten minutes, at the farthest, before I
should meet the surface of the earth, and be hurled into
annihilation!" But at length reflection came to my relief. I paused; I
considered; and I began to doubt. The matter was impossible. I could
not in any reason have so rapidly come down. Besides, although I was
evidently approaching the surface below me, it was with a speed by
no means commensurate with the velocity I had at first so horribly
conceived. This consideration served to calm the perturbation of my
mind, and I finally succeeded in regarding the phenomenon in its
proper point of view. In fact, amazement must have fairly deprived
me of my senses, when I could not see the vast difference, in
appearance, between the surface below me, and the surface of my
mother earth.
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