It seemed to hesitate at first, and went spinning around,
like a top; but at last a brisk current caught it, and it
advanced over the lake, and was soon borne away at a
speed of twenty miles per hour.
The doctor continued to keep at a height of from two
hundred to five hundred feet. Kennedy frequently discharged
his rifle; and, when passing over islands, the
aeronauts approached them even imprudently, scrutinizing
the thickets, the bushes, the underbrush--in fine, every spot
where a mass of shade or jutting rock could have afforded
a retreat to their companion. They swooped down close
to the long pirogues that navigated the lake; and the
wild fishermen, terrified at the sight of the balloon, would
plunge into the water and regain their islands with every
symptom of undisguised affright.
"We can see nothing," said Kennedy, after two hours
of search.
"Let us wait a little longer, Dick, and not lose heart.
We cannot be far away from the scene of our accident."
By eleven o'clock the balloon had gone ninety miles.
It then fell in with a new current, which, blowing almost
at right angles to the other, drove them eastward about
sixty miles. It next floated over a very large and populous
island, which the doctor took to be Farram, on which
the capital of the Biddiomahs is situated.
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