Five Weeks in a Balloon
yet seemed gifted with herculean
strength; a face embrowned by the sun; eyes keen
and black; a natural air of daring courage; in fine,
something sound, solid, and reliable in his entire person,
spoke, at first glance, in favor of the bonny Scot.
    The acquaintanceship of these two friends had been
formed in India, when they belonged to the same regiment.
While Dick would be out in pursuit of the tiger
and the elephant, Samuel would be in search of plants and
insects. Each could call himself expert in his own province,
and more than one rare botanical specimen, that to
science was as great a victory won as the conquest of a
pair of ivory tusks, became the doctor's booty.
    These two young men, moreover, never had occasion
to save each other's lives, or to render any reciprocal
service. Hence, an unalterable friendship. Destiny
sometimes bore them apart, but sympathy always united
them again.
    Since their return to England they had been frequently
separated by the doctor's distant expeditions; but, on
his return, the latter never failed to go, not to ASK for
hospitality, but to bestow some weeks of his presence at
the home of his crony Dick.
    The Scot talked of the past; the doctor busily prepared
for the future. The one looked back, the other forward.
Hence, a restless spirit personified in Ferguson; perfect
calmness typified in Kennedy—such was the contrast.
    After his journey to the Thibet, the doctor had remained
nearly two years without hinting at new explorations; and
Dick, supposing that his friend's instinct for travel and
thirst for adventure had at length died out, was perfectly
enchanted. They would have ended badly, some day or other,
he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has
with men, one does not travel always with impunity among
cannibals and wild beasts. So, Kennedy besought the doctor
to tie up his bark for life, having done enough for science,
and too much for the gratitude of men.
    The doctor contented himself with making no reply to
this. He remained absorbed in his own reflections, giving
himself up to secret calculations, passing his nights among
heaps of figures, and making experiments with the
strangest-looking machinery, inexplicable to everybody but
himself. It could readily be guessed, though, that some great
thought was fermenting in his brain.
    "What can he have been planning?" wondered Kennedy, when, in
the month of January, his friend quitted him to return to London.
    He found out one morning when he looked into the Daily Telegraph.
    "Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, "the lunatic! the
madman! Cross Africa in a balloon! Nothing but that
was wanted to cap the climax! That's what he's been
bothering his wits about these two years past!"
    Now, reader, substitute for all these exclamation points,
as many ringing thumps with a brawny fist upon the table,
and you have some idea of the manual exercise that Dick
went through while he thus spoke.
    When his confidential maid-of-all-work, the aged Elspeth,
tried to insinuate that the whole thing might be a hoax—
    "Not a bit of it!" said he. "Don't I know my man? Isn't it
just like him? Travel through the air! There, now, he's
jealous of the eagles, next! No! I warrant you, he'll not
do it! I'll find a way to stop him! He! why if they'd let
him alone, he'd start some day for the moon!"
    On that very evening Kennedy, half alarmed, and half
exasperated, took the train for London, where he arrived
next morning.
    Three-quarters of an hour later a cab deposited him at
the door of the doctor's modest dwelling, in Soho Square,
Greek Street. Forthwith he bounded up the steps and
announced his arrival with five good, hearty, sounding
raps at the door.
    Ferguson opened, in person.
    "Dick! you here?" he exclaimed, but with no great
expression of surprise, after all.
    "Dick himself!" was the response.
    "What, my dear boy, you at London, and this the
mid-season of the winter shooting?"
    "Yes! here I am, at London!"
    "And what have you come to town for?"
    "To
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