Read Ebook: A Balloon Ascension at Midnight by Hall George Eli Ross Gordon Illustrator

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Ebook has 118 lines and 7956 words, and 3 pages

Such accuracy of movement is only possible with a very small balloon, in the early hours of the day, and with a perfectly even temperature. Of course, it is always dangerous, as a slight mistake would instantly lead to a hopeless disaster.

Suddenly, while crossing a deep ravine, the coolness of the air drags us down. The rocky banks of the torrent are upon us.

As I open my mouth to offer a mild objection; a hatful of ballast goes overboard; we instantly shoot up in the air, and, before I can realize what has occurred, the barometer marks six and seven thousand feet.

"C'est d'en haut qu'on appr?cie bien les choses humaines et il faut avoir pass? sur les points ?lev?s pour conna?tre la petitesse de celles que nous voyons grandes."

Alf. de Vigny.

I shall never forget this first and sudden leap to such terrifying altitudes. I thought we would never stop rising, and stood breathless as I saw the earth leave us, sink in at the centre, and swell out at the horizon like a bowl.

How often have we not followed with delighted eyes the majestic flight of the clouds, and longed for their liberty and the freedom of their voyages in the skies?

They have seen, perhaps in a single day, the countries and the homes we love, and cherish in remembrance or in hope. They have passed over spots that have beaten time to our happiest hours; they have looked down upon places that have witnessed our deepest sorrows.

Up to their glittering realm we rise, and cutting through the impalpable vapor, we reach the upper spheres of everlasting starlight and sunshine, where the limits of the empyrean begin, that mysterious zone, visited only by the queen bee, once in her lifetime, on the day of her "nuptial flight."

Followed by ten thousand lovers, each with ten thousand eyes to watch her, she ascends like a prayer in the sweet-scented freshness of the morning.

The amorous horde, like the moving tail of a comet, devours the space beneath her.

Never before has she breathed the dew-laden breeze, never has she felt the blinding rays of the sun.

But she has heard the eternal voice of nature; and drunk with the perfume of a million flowers, staggered by the riotous cries and plaintive wails of her wooing drones, transfixed by the ocean of divine light above her, she rises to heights unknown. One by one, her exhausted lovers have given up the chase and fallen like so many stones in the depths of the abyss below: strange and mystic manifestation of the survival of the fittest.

Now a mere handful, with throbbing flanks and starting eyeballs, strives to follow her to the mysterious sacrifice of royal love and death.

One, the last one, the Chosen one reaches his Queen; her arms are open to receive him, and he falls in their mortal embrace. He lives his whole life in a second, and gives up the ghost in one gasp of ineffable ecstasy.

The varied emotions of our trip above the clouds are simply superhuman, but the owner does not seem to enjoy them:

I know he is longing to play with the trees again; but before I can answer, the valve-rope is jerked, and we drop two or three thousand feet.

Looking up through the open appendix, I can see the interior of the balloon, the valve-rope hanging in the centre, and watch the valve open and close at the top.

We are now traveling with the wind at a speed of forty miles an hour, but we feel no motion whatever. The hills, the meadows, the hamlets, rush toward us in a mad race, as if driven by the mighty hand of God.

The world looks like a painted atlas, with every little detail carefully marked. As I compare it with the military map in my hands, I can not tell which is the better of the two; and, moreover, at this altitude, they both seem the same size.

The captain is throwing out ballast,--quite a lot it seems to me. But the barometer is still falling. Down we go, and in a moment we are close to earth again. Half a dozen peasants are harvesting in the grain fields.

"Captain! we are dead birds this time!"

The advice is worth following. No sooner said than done, and the basket after kicking off the top of a haystack, drops in the midst of the dumfounded farmers.

Relieved for a second of its weight, the "Rolla" bounds ahead. More ballast flies out, and we are off on another trip to the clouds.

Exposed, as it is, alternately to the burning rays of the sun and the numerous cool currents that we meet on our way, the "Rolla" soon becomes flighty and hard to control. A few minutes later we are not two hundred feet over the meadows.

Another rise, without apparently any cause for it, and soon we are falling again; this time over the ancient city of Sens, with its beautiful cathedral, around which the quaint old houses are huddled, and held close together by a belt of green boulevards.

As I wonder how we would look impaled on that sharp gothic steeple, a dozen pounds of ballast sends us skyward like a rocket.

"It's not the distance, it's the pace that kills."

It was then ten o'clock. We had traveled by actual measurement on the map, one hundred and eighty kilometers. The heat was increasing rapidly and the sensitive bubble over our heads had become more erratic than ever. Down it would drop a few thousand feet, if a cloud happened to darken the sun, and then up three or four thousand, as soon as the cloud had passed on.

The "Rolla" was then at nine thousand feet; we had lost the wind on our way up, and below, in the west, the storm was rapidly gaining on us.

We had still four sacks of sand ballast of the nine we had taken up with us. Every knot that held them to the basket was carefully examined; a precaution of vital importance, as we would soon be above the clouds again, if any of them escaped us in the varied incidents that might attend our descent. The lunch-basket and our coats were also securely fastened, and the anchor partly unlashed and made ready to be dropped.

I held the barometer, with eyes glued upon its face, ready to call out our future altitudes. My companion, with the valve-rope in his right and the ballast-spoon within reach, was still gazing earnestly at the fields in the distance, where we hoped we might stand alive a few minutes later.

Not a word had been spoken for some time, when the captain said:

We can hear the gas sputter as it leaves the creaking silk.

Instantly the barometer drops. We have started on our final descent.

The captain's fondness for "valving" had set us falling again at an awful speed, and the sand he was throwing out was rising around the "Rolla" in little thin clouds, and dropping like hail on the silk above us.

I looked down. The earth was rising!--rising to meet us, like a fabulous mother eager to receive her children in her outstretched arms.

I stood hypnotized and cold, until called back to my barometer. I saw that the captain's teeth were set, but his eye was clear and serene.

We are falling at an angle of thirty or forty degrees. Everything below us is moving at lightning speed.

My voice is slightly hoarse, but I call out the numbers as fast as I see them, and they follow each other in rapid succession.

The sudden change of altitude makes us both very deaf; but I can still hear the captain say:

"Haul in the other sack of sand!--We must keep up long enough to clear that forest and land in the field beyond, this side of the large clump of trees."

The ballast is doing better work, and we are not falling so rapidly; but only half of the treacherous forest has been cleared: there is more and enough of it, that stands threatening below us.

"We shall never sail over it," mutters the owner.

At this moment we swing into a violent gale, forerunner of the storm behind us. The "Rolla" quivers in its net, seems to hesitate for a mere second, and bravely leaps ahead.

"Whatever happens, don't jump!" cries the captain.

Of course, had I done so at any time, he would have shot up in the air ten or fifteen thousand feet.

Like a hawk swooping down on its prey, and with the same graceful curve, the "Rolla" clears, with ten feet to spare, the crest of the last trees.

We hear the guide-rope dragging in the branches.

As quick as a flash the captain has the anchor overboard.

But the gale is driving us on, and the iron teeth fail to bite the sod.

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