CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.
ANOTHER SPELL OF DESPAIR.
Never, during all the days of their sojourn in that "Valley of Despond," did our adventurers feel more despondence, than on the afternoon that succeeded the bursting of their great air-bubble--the balloon.

They felt that in this effort, they had exhausted all their ingenuity; and so firmly were they convinced of its being the last, that no one thought about making another.

The spirits of all three were prostrate in the dust, and seemed at length to have surrendered to despair.
Of course, it was not that sort of despair which takes possession of one conscious of coming and certain death.

It was far from being so dire as this; but for all it was a bitter feeling.

They knew they could continue to live, perhaps as long there, as elsewhere upon the earth; but what would life be worth to them, cut off from all communication with the world ?--for now, to the fulness of conviction, did they believe themselves thus isolated.
In disposition not one of the three had the slightest particle of the hermit.