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extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper
cause--my situation directly above it, and in the line of its greatest
power. But at the time, I thought only of preserving my life. The
balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round
and round with horrible velocity, and finally, reeling and staggering
like a drunken man, hurled me with great force over the rim of the car,
and left me dangling, at a terrific height, with my head downward, and
my face outwards, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in
length, which hung accidentally through a crevice near the bottom of
the wicker-work, and in which, as I fell, my left foot became most
providentially entangled. It is impossible--utterly impossible--to form
any adequate idea of the horror of my situation. I gasped convulsively
for breath--a shudder resembling a fit of the ague agitated every nerve
and muscle of my frame--I felt my eyes starting from their sockets--a
horrible nausea overwhelmed me--and at length I fainted away.
"
How long I remained in this state it is impossible to say. It must,
however, have been no inconsiderable time, for when I partially
recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking, the balloon
at a prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace
of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast
horizon. My sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means
so rife with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed, there was
much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my
situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other,
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