In this way the platform commanded the excited crowd.

Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans stood upright and placed their left hands on their hearts, to signify how deeply they were touched by their reception.

Then they extended their right hands towards the zenith, to signify that the greatest of known balloons was about to take possession of the supra-terrestrial domain.
A hundred thousand hands were placed in answer on a hundred thousand hearts, and a hundred thousand other hands were lifted to the sky.
The third gun was fired at half-past eleven.

"Let go!" shouted Uncle Prudent; and the "Go-Ahead" rose "majestically"-- an adverb consecrated by custom to all aerostatic ascents.
It really was a superb spectacle.

It seemed as if a vessel were just launched from the stocks.