After several days' rest and a hero's welcome, the professor recounts his journey before a captivated audience. The world waits breathlessly to find out how Sherman could have circumnavigated the globe in record time and landed in the ocean with twenty balloons rather than the one with which he began his journey. Sherman, a recently retired schoolteacher, was last seen three weeks ago leaving San Francisco on a giant balloon, determined to spend a year drifting alone. The main story begins with the rescue of Professor William Waterman Sherman, who is picked up by a steamship while floating among a strange wreck of twenty one deflated gas balloons in the North Atlantic. Balloon travel is said to be ideal for the second kind. The introduction compares two types of journeys: one that aims to reach a place within the shortest time, and another that begins without regard to speed and without a destination in mind.
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