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EREWHON.

distinct recollection. Some things I can recall—as that we were ere long enveloped in vapour which froze upon my moustache and whiskers; then comes a memory of my sitting for hours and hours in a thick fog, hearing no sound but my own breathing and Arowhena's (for we hardly spoke, being too greatly agitated for words) and seeing no sight but the car beneath us and beside us and the dark balloon above. I also call to mind a trivial circumstance which seems hardly worth mentioning, but which has somehow or other stuck by me, while many more important things have faded away. I mean that when we were in the mist the last few bars of the first part of the minuet in Saul kept running incessantly in my head; to this day they invariably recur to me when I find myself in such a cloud or mist as recalls to me my voyage in the balloon.

Perhaps the most painful feeling when the earth was hidden was that the balloon was motionless, though our only hope lay in our going forward with an extreme of speed. From time to time through a rift in the clouds I caught a glimpse of earth, and was thankful to perceive that we must be flying forward faster than in an express train; but no sooner was the rift closed than the old conviction of our being stationary returned in full force, and was not to be reasoned with: there was another feeling also which was nearly as bad; for as a child that fears it has gone blind in a long tunnel if there is no light, so ere the earth had been many minutes hidden, I became half frightened lest I might not have broken away from it clean and for ever. Now and again, I ate and gave food to Arowhena, but by guess work as regards