Ten per cent of it is admiration for the Southern victory at Bull Run, and ninety per cent of it is hatred--at least by their ruling classes--of republican institutions, and a wish to see them fall here." "I suspect you're right," said Dick, "and we'll have to try all the harder to keep them from being a failure.

Look, there goes our balloon!" Every day, usually late in the afternoon, a captive balloon rose from the Northern camp, and officers with powerful glasses inspected the Southern position, watching for an advance or a new movement of any kind.
"I'm going up in it some day," said Dick, confidently.

"Colonel Newcomb has promised me that he will take me with him when his turn for the ascension comes." The chance was a week in coming, a tremendously long time it seemed to Dick, but it came at last.

He climbed into the basket with Colonel Newcomb, two generals, and the aeronauts and sat very quiet in a corner.
He felt an extraordinary thrill when the ropes were allowed to slide and the balloon was slowly going almost straight upward.

The sensation was somewhat similar to that which shook him when he went into battle at Bull Run, but pride came to his rescue and he soon forgot the physical tremor to watch the world that now rolled beneath them, a world that they seemed to have left, although the ropes always held.
Dick's gaze instinctively turned southward, where he knew the Confederate army lay.