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| 1 | 90 | 180 | 269 | 359 |
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and a large quantity of provisions, such as pemmican, in which much
nutriment is contained in comparatively little bulk. I also secured in
the car a pair of pigeons and a cat. It was now nearly daybreak, and I
thought it high time to take my departure. Dropping a lighted cigar on
the ground, as if by accident, I took the opportunity, in stooping to
pick it up, of igniting privately the piece of slow match, whose end,
as I said before, protruded a very little beyond the lower rim of one of
the smaller casks. This manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of
the three duns; and, jumping into the car, I immediately cut the single
cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that I shot
upward, carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of
leaden ballast, and able to have carried up as many more.
"Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when,
roaring and rumbling up after me in the most horrible and tumultuous
manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and smoke, and sulphur, and
legs and arms, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, that
my very heart sunk within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the car,
trembling with unmitigated terror. Indeed, I now perceived that I had
entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences of the
shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a second,
I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and immediately
thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst abruptly
through the night and seemed to rip the very firmament asunder. When
I afterward had time for reflection, I did not fail to attribute the
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