and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for
varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world
bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry,
sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read
these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or
tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or
describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have
enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me
some time ago.
[Illustration: "BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS."]
Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is certainly a queer
place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his
balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away
through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and
visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and
cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be
growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an
Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really,
half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great
kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men
working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with
parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three
thousand feet for his afternoon "skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the
celebrated aeronaut (also the professor's wife), making an ascension now
and then from the front lawn in a chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons.
[Illustration: "FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE."]
And in winter, should you explore the upper rooms of the house, you
would find all the balloons tucked away snugly in cocoons, as it were,
fast asleep, ranged along the attic floor, each under its net, each
ticketed with a record of its work, marked for good or bad conduct after
it has been tested by master or mistress.
For weeks at a time in the experiment season a captive balloon hovers
above the Frankfort farm, say twelve hundred feet up, and the tricks
they play with that balloon would draw all the boys in the country, if
their parents would let them go. Three guy-ropes hold the balloon steady
like legs of an enormous tripod, and straight down from the netting a
fourth rope hangs free. Now, imagine swinging on a rope twelve hundred
feet long! They do that often for tests of flying-machines or
aeroplanes--swing off the housetop, and sail away in a long, slow curve,
just clearing the ground, and land on top of a windmill at the far side
of the grounds. That's a swing worth talking about! And fancy a man
hitched fast to this rope by shoulder-straps, and as he swings flapping
a pair of great wings made of feathers and silk, and trying to steer
with a ridiculous spreading tail of the same materials. The professor
had a visit from such a man, who had spent years and a fortune in
contriving this flying device, which, alas! would never fly.
[Illustration: "A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK--WHICH,
ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY."]
Professor Myers, like most aeronauts, insists that traveling by balloon,
for one who understands it, is no more perilous, but rather less so,
than ordinary travel by rail or trolley or motor carriage. He points out
that for thirty-odd years he and his wife have led a most active
aeronaut existence, have done all things that are done in balloons,
besides some new ones, and got no harm from it--some substantial good
rather, notably an aerial torpedo (operated by electricity from the
ground), which flies swiftly in any desired direction, its silken fans
and aluminum propeller under perfect control from a switchboard; also
the "skycycle" balloon, which lifts the aeronaut in a suspended saddle
and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flapping aeroplanes
(these driven by hands and feet), to make a gain on the wind, when going
with it, of ten or twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor
Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to go against the wind,
but selecting currents from the many available ones that favor his
purpose. "What is the use," says he, "of fighting the wind when you can
make the wind fight for you? People who take trains or boats wait for a
certain hour or a certain tide, in the same way we wait for a certain
wind current, and there is never long to wait, for the wind blows in
totally different directions at different altitudes."
"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about these varying currents?"
"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds and by observations with
kites and other instruments. And we would soon know much more if
experimenters would work on these lines of conquering nature by yielding
to her rather than opposing her."
In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there were many, we went
first into the spectacular side of ballooning, the more obviously
interesting part, stories of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling
adventure, of the fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over
Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles in sixty
minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the English aeronaut who leaped
from his car to death in the sea that a comrade might be saved through
the lessened weight, of two lovesick Frenchmen who duelled with pistols
from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped in wonder from the earth and
shuddered when one silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down
to death with principal and second. And many more of that kind which, I
must say, leave one far from convinced on the non-danger point.
Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things about balloons--this,
for instance, that the rapid rise of an air-ship makes an aeronaut
suffer the same pain and pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows,
only now the air presses from inside the head outward. And relief from
this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by repeatedly opening the
mouth and swallowing.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE."]
And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. The balloon is always
standing still to the person in it, while the earth rushes madly along,
forty, sixty, ninety miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile
the ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deepening bowl, while
the horizon sweeps up like a loosened spring. Then presently this
illusion passes, and you see everything flat. There are no hills any
more, nor villages; no towers nor steep descents, only a level surface,
marked charmingly in color, sometimes in wonderful mosaics, and
strangely in light and shade. At the height of two miles nothing is
familiar; you might as well be looking at the moon, for all you can
recognize. Roads become yellowish lines; rivers brownish lines (and the
water vanishes); a mountain-range becomes a shaded strip, with less
shade on one edge (where the sun is) than on the other; a forest becomes
a patch of color; a town another patch. There is scarcely any difference
between water and land, and you see to the bottom of a lake, so that the
configuration of its bed in valley and hill are apparent through the
color and the shading. This singular disappearance of water bodies, for
it amounts to almost that, has an evident importance.
"I'll tell you what we did on Lake Ontario," said the professor, "as a
result of observations I made there from a balloon. In sailing over the
lake on one occasion I remarked a number of small shaded spots which
puzzled me. I could not imagine what they were. Finally, with the help
of powerful field-glasses, I made them out to be wrecks sunk at various
depths, and I realized that Lake Ontario, and indeed all the great
lakes, abound in vessels which have gone down during centuries and never
been recovered. No one can estimate the treasure which lies there
waiting for some one to reclaim it. And I saw that it is a perfectly
simple matter to locate these wrecks from a balloon, and to prove this I
organized a modest wrecking expedition, and indicated to the diver where
he was to go down. Down he went at that point, and found the wreck I had
seen, and we pumped good coal out of her by hundreds of tons. What I
did then on a small scale might be done on a large scale by any one
willing to undertake it."
Of course I asked the professor why it is that an aeronaut can see down
into a lake better than, say, an observer in a boat, and he explained
that there is a great gain in intensity of terrestrial illumination when
the viewpoint is at a height, because the sun's rays converge toward the
earth, the sun being so many times larger, and therefore (this is his
theory) a man lifted above the earth gets many more solar rays reflected
to him from a given area than he would get if nearer to that area. In a
word, it is a matter of optics and angles, but, the professor declares,
most assuredly a fact.
[Illustration: HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE
MILE.
(Photographed from a balloon.)]
Never before these talks did I realize how busy an aeronaut is, how much
there is to do in a balloon. Besides attending to valve-cords and
ballast there is the barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can
you know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly as you rise,
slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand feet. Rising or falling,
you know the worst or the best there. Sometimes the needle sticks, the
barometer will not work, and you must cast overside pieces of
tissue-paper to see by their rise or fall if you are going up or down.
By your senses alone you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling,
or your distance from the earth. That is most deceiving. Then you must
have your watch ready to reckon your speed, so many thousand feet up or
down in so many seconds, and your map spread out (nailed to a board, and
that lashed fast), to tell where you are, and your compass out to fix
the north and south points, for a balloon twists slowly all the time,
twists one way going up and the other way coming down. Nobody knows just
why this is, unless it be the unequal drawing of the seams as the
fabric swells and shrinks.
"I always keep the mouth of my balloon within easy reach," said the
professor, "and play with it as an engineer does with his
throttle-valve. Sometimes I even tie it shut when I am sailing, but that
is dangerous."
"Why dangerous?"
"Because the balloon might ascend suddenly, and the expanding gas burst
it."
"Can you see up into the balloon," I asked, "through the mouth?"
"Of course you can, and a beautiful sight it is. You look up through a
round window, twenty inches or so in diameter, into the great bag,
swelled out fifty or sixty feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so
that every line and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in
exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you see a spread of
gold and amber melting away in changing colors to the shaded parts. The
balloon seems to be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you
upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel that your balloon
is alive."
"Does it make any noise?"
"Usually not. Now and then there is a creaking of the basket or a rustle
of fabric, as you pass from one wind current to another, but as you
drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of
a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You
have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express
train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an
hour and beaten it."
"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?"
"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. You seem to be at
the very point where the lightning starts and the thunder-crash is
born. All about you are roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up
on you and down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I never
heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, it is a common thing
for operators on the ground even in fair weather to get shocks of
atmospheric electricity down the anchor ropes of captive balloons."
Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of exciting times reporting
the great yacht races from captive balloons (with reporters turning
seasick in the plunging basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from
balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called parhelions) cast
on clouds, and wonderful light effects, as when a marveling aeronaut
looks down upon a sea of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through
black clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath.
I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, say above three
miles, the voice almost fails to serve, or, rather, the rarefied air
loses in great part its power of voice transmission, so that in the vast
silent spaces of the sky one aeronaut must literally shout to another in
the same basket to make himself heard. One would say that the great,
calm heavens resent the chattering intrusion of noisy little men.
II
WHICH TREATS OF EXPERIMENTS IN STEERING BALLOONS
IN all their experiments at the farm, Professor Myers and Mme. Carlotta
have worked on individual lines, he striving of late years to perfect
his skycycle (which is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging
of propellers and fans underneath), while she has been content to gain
skill in steering a balloon of ordinary shape by merely moving her body
and utilizing varying air-currents, for the wind blows in different
directions as you ascend.
It is remarkable how the position of an aeronaut's body may alter a
balloon's movements. It is possible, for instance, to make a balloon
ascend or descend, without touching valve or ballast, by a simple change
of position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from edge to edge of
the basket, and by throwing your weight first on one foot and then on
the other you will give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you,
and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hundreds of feet. Or if
you would make it descend (all this the professor explained to me),
stand with your feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching
the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide apart so that the
fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway your hips forward as far as you
can, then back as far as you can, and keep doing this. Now the
wriggling process is reversed; and this time the basket goes first,
"tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends.
[Illustration: MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE
FOOT-BOARD.]
This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Carlotta to pass easily
from one train of clouds to another, and, by long study of these
cross-moving aerial trains, she is able to pick out the one she wants
for a certain destination with almost the precision of a foot-passenger
selecting his particular street-car or changing from one to another. And
in descending she has learned to steer forward or back, to left or
right, by tipping the basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to
take. The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board as a ship
follows her rudder.
An almost incredible instance of the skill attained by Carlotta in these
experiments was furnished some dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made
an ascension never forgotten by the people of that city. It was a grand
occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's gift of the Crystal Palace to her
loyal subjects, and Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty-five
thousand people, as was estimated, were packed inside the Exposition
grounds to see the aeronaut rise to the clouds. And there at the
appointed time stood Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude
about her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt over a
gymnasium suit, and made an attractive picture with her fine figure and
golden-bronze hair. So thought various city dignitaries, who chatted
with her admiringly while the crowd surged about them.
Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching the manoeuvers of some
Indians hired by a committee to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles
distant, where it had been filled. This was rather against the
professor's judgment, for the Rideau River, flowing by the grounds,
offered an obstacle that could be overcome only with the help of canoes
and tow-lines; and to paddle a big balloon across a river, a
fresh-filled, hard-tugging balloon, is not a thing to be undertaken
lightly. And in spite of all their skill these Indians found themselves
presently lifted into the air, canoes and all (oh, they were badly
frightened Indians!), not quite clear of the water, but high enough to
make it doubtful if they would ever reach shore, and highly interesting
to the crowd which pressed down to the river, even into the river, in
well-meant efforts to help, and dragged the balloon up the bank and
along toward the platform with such eagerness that they tore great rents
in it that let out the gas in volumes.
In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon became the center of a
struggling mass of people, who slowly pressed in from all sides to see
what the matter was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all
pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill with those at
that point; and had not Carlotta acted on a flash of inspiration there
would surely have been disaster in that merciless crush. She looked over
the shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw the danger--saw
women held helpless and fainting in that jam of bodies; saw one way, and
only one, to save the situation, and took that way. Stepping off the
platform, she ran lightly and swiftly over heads and shoulders, packed
solid, and came to the balloon. Such was the people's fright that they
scarcely felt her pass.
"You can't go up," cried her husband; "the balloon is a wreck."
"I must go up," she answered; "if I don't these people will be crushed
to death."
"There's a hole in her big enough to drive a team through," he
protested; but already she was in the basket, and a great cheer arose.
[Illustration: "IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND
THEMSELVES PRESENTLY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND ALL."]
"It's better to risk one life than many," she answered with decision,
and, turning to the crowd, motioned them to loose the car. In their
wonder the mad multitude forgot their fear, and the struggling quieted.
All eyes were now on the balloon; one woman's courage had quelled the
panic. The danger to the crowd was past, to the woman just beginning.
"Wait a moment," shouted Professor Myers; "you must have more ballast."
But in the din of voices she misunderstood him and cast out the last
bag. Then, with a great heave and a flapping of its torn sides, the
balloon wrenched itself free and shot upward, a cripple soaring with its
last strength. Up and up it went, higher and higher as the small store
of gas expanded. That tattered balloon, with its seams gaping open,
raised itself somehow two miles over the city of Ottawa, and then almost
immediately began to fall. The gas stayed in just long enough to lift
the broken bag, and then left it to dash downward. Professor Myers,
heart-sick on the ground, turned his eyes away, sure that he had seen
his wife alive for the last time.
But Carlotta was of no such mind. She had saved the crowd, now she would
save herself; and even as the balloon dropped with frightful speed, she
put her plan into action. Swinging herself up on the netting, she caught
the flapping silk above a long tear, and drew it down with all her
weight until it reached the car. Instantly the air rushed in underneath,
and bellied out the fabric into a great umbrella, a parachute improvised
from a ripped balloon. Now they were slowing up; they had put the brakes
on, and now they were soaring easily, drifting with the wind. Carlotta
drew a long breath of relief and looked down. They were still a mile
above ground. She had the runaway in hand, but where should she land
him? Most aeronauts would have been thankful enough to get down alive
anywhere; she proposed to do a feat of steering as well. No doubt there
was some gas in the upper part of the bag to help her, but in the main
she was guiding a parachute; and she guided it so skilfully by tipping
the foot-board forward or back, to left or right, that she landed
finally in a clump of evergreen-trees, some fifteen miles from Ottawa,
that she had selected as the very place she proposed to land. And great
were the rejoicings when it was known that she had come to no harm.
The story had an interesting sequel the following year, when Carlotta
made another ascension from the same place.
"Where will you land this time?" one of the committee asked her.
Carlotta looked at the clouds a moment, then, smiling, said, "If you
like, I will land exactly where I did last year."
This they all declared impossible, for the wind was strong in just the
opposite direction; but Carlotta insisted she would land in that clump
of evergreens and nowhere else. And she kept her word. She had observed
that at a certain height the wind was favorable to her purpose, and by
the same tactics of seeking the right wind-currents and by the same
clever foot-board tipping she reached the point she was steering for, to
the general wonder and admiration.
My acquaintance with Professor Myers has given me some light on a
question often in my mind; that is, what kind of children these men have
who follow careers of danger and daring. Will the son of a
steeple-climber climb steeples? Will the daughter of a lion-tamer be
afraid of a mouse? And so on. Of course, with both father and mother
aeronauts, as in this case, it would be strange indeed if their child
did not love balloons; and so it has turned out, for Miss Aerial Myers,
now a girl in her teens, has already made various ascensions, and enjoys
nothing better than soaring aloft on her father's skycycle, which she
steers skilfully. Her first experience of a voyage in the air is
memorable for two facts, that it nearly brought destruction to herself
and her mother, and drew attention to an important but little-known fact
in ballooning science.
It was some years ago, at the Syracuse County Fair, and a balloon race
had been advertised between Carlotta and young Tysdell, an assistant of
Professor Myers. For this event an enormous crowd had gathered on the
grounds. And now (by what tears and pleadings who can say?) Miss Aerial,
aged eleven, had persuaded her too fond mother to take her along, and
off they went, amid cheers and wavings, with a strong breeze blowing,
and the child peering down at the dwindling earth over the basket-side.
She watched the roads change into yellow streaks, and the hills swing up
from back of the horizon, and the clouds spread away below them like a
sea. She watched her mother take readings of compass and barometer, and
as the wind swept them along to new view-points she would cry out, "Here
comes another town, mama!" and clap her hands as the town raced by.
[Illustration: MME. CARLOTTA CALLS FOR ASSISTANCE FROM ANOTHER
BALLOONIST THREE MILES AWAY.]
Tysdell won the race, having ballast in plenty to throw out, while
Carlotta had little, since the extra lifting-power of her balloon was
needed for Miss Aerial. Now, the difficulty of managing a balloon is
much increased if you have no ballast, for then you cannot rise at will
to enter a higher wind-current blowing the way you want to go, but must
drift where the current you are in may take you. And the current they
were in took them (such is the perversity of things) straight toward a
deep and dangerous lake. Carlotta saw where they were going, but was
powerless to prevent it. She could not throw Miss Aerial overboard like
a sand-bag to make the balloon go higher, although she did throw
overboard everything else that was movable, even to her jacket and
shoes. Then, having done all that was possible, she waited, clutching
the basket-sides with anxious fingers, and wondering if there was any
way to safety.