As his feet flew off the ground, one of his father's friends grabbed his legs and tried pulling him down. The yank wasn't strong enough to bring the balloon back, but it did cinch the rope tightly around four fingers of his hand.

"I couldn't have let go if I had wanted to," Nowell said. "It was almost like a dreamlike experience. As the people on the ground got smaller and smaller, all I wanted was to do anything I could to relieve the pain."

Nowell says it hurt so much he was trying to reach his pocketknife, thinking he would cut the rope, even if it meant dropping from the sky.

Meanwhile, up in the basket, balloonist William Berry of Concord was utterly unaware that he had a passenger. The racket from the hot air burner kept Berry from hearing Nowell yelling. It wasn't until he reached 3,000 feet that he turned off the burner and looked over the side to see a boy hanging from a rope.