[Dark Saint Alaick]

I now considered it high time to die (since fortune had so determined to persecute me),
and accordingly made my way to the nearest river. Here, divesting myself of my clothes
(for there is no reason why we cannot die as we were born), I threw myself headlong into
the current; the sole witness of my fate being a solitary crow that had been seduced into
the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No
sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into his head to fly away with the
most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my
suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and
betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required
and its circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full
speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my
property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon terra firma; the fact is, I
had thrown myself over a precipice, and should inevitably have been dashed to pieces but
for my good fortune in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a
passing balloon.