MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT
I have kept the clearest remembrance of the delightful sensations I
experienced in this my first trial in the air. I arrived early at
the Parc d'Aerostation of Vaugirard so as to lose nothing of the
preparations.
The balloon, of a capacity of 750 cubic metres, was lying a flat mass on
the grass. At a signal from M. Lachambre the workmen turned on the gas,
and soon the formless thing rounded up into a great sphere and rose into
the air.
At 11 A.M. all was ready. The basket rocked prettily beneath the
balloon, which a mild, fresh breeze was caressing. Impatient to be off,
I stood in my corner of the narrow wicker basket with a bag of ballast
in my hand. In the other corner M. Machuron gave the word: "Let go all!"
Suddenly the wind ceased. The air seemed motionless around us. We were
off, going at the speed of the air current in which we now lived and
moved. Indeed, for us, there was no more wind; and this is the first
great fact of all spherical ballooning. Infinitely gentle is this unfelt
movement forward and upward. The illusion is complete: it seems not to
be the balloon that moves but the earth that sinks down and away.
At the bottom of the abyss, which already opened 1500 yards below us,
the earth, instead of appearing round like a ball, shows concave like a
bowl by a peculiar phenomenon of refraction whose effect is to lift up
constantly to the aeronaut's eyes the circle of the horizon.
Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene,
out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These
faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs,
are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air.
The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human
beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways, and the
rows of houses look like children's playthings.
While my gaze was still held fascinated on the scene a cloud passed
before the sun. Its shadow cooled the gas in the balloon, which wrinkled
and began descending, gently at first, and then with accelerated speed,
against which we strove by throwing out ballast. This is the second
great fact of spherical ballooning--we are masters of our altitude by
the possession of a few pounds of sand!
Regaining our equilibrium above a plateau of clouds at about 3000 yards
we enjoyed a wonderful sight. The sun cast the shadow of the balloon on
this screen of dazzling whiteness, while our own profiles, magnified to
giant size, appeared in the centre of a triple rainbow! As we could no
longer see the earth all sensation of movement ceased. We might be going
at storm speed and not know it. We could not even know the direction we
were taking save by descending below the clouds to regain our bearings.
A joyous peal of bells mounted up to us. It was the noonday Angelus
ringing from some village belfry. I had brought up with us a substantial
lunch of hard-boiled eggs, cold roast beef and chicken, cheese,
ice-cream, fruits and cakes, champagne, coffee, and Chartreuse.
Nothing is more delicious than lunching like this above the clouds
in a spherical balloon. No dining-room can be so marvellous in its
decoration. The sun sets the clouds in ebullition, making them throw up
rainbow jets of frozen vapour like great sheaves of fireworks all around
the table. Lovely white spangles of the most delicate ice formation
scatter here and there by magic; while flakes of snow form, moment by
moment, out of nothingness, beneath our very eyes, and in our very
drinking-glasses.
I was finishing my little glass of liqueur when the curtain suddenly
fell on this wonderful stage setting of sunlight, cloud billows, and
azure. The barometer rose rapidly 5 millimetres, showing a sudden
rupture of equilibrium and a swift descent. Probably the balloon had
become loaded down with several pounds of snow, and it was falling into
a cloud.
We passed into the half darkness of the fog. We could still see our
basket, our instruments, and the parts of the rigging nearest us, but
the netting that held us to the balloon was visible only to a certain
height, and the balloon itself had completely disappeared. So we had for
a moment the strange and delightful sensation of hanging in the void
without support, of having lost our last ounce of weight in a limbo of
nothingness, sombre and portentous.
After a few minutes of fall, slackened by throwing out more ballast, we
found ourselves under the clouds at a distance of about 300 yards from
the ground. A village fled away from us below. We took our bearings with
the compass, and compared our route map with the immense natural map
that unfolded below. Soon we could identify roads, railways, villages,
and forests, all hastening toward us from the horizon with the swiftness
of the wind itself.
The storm which had sent us downward marked a change of weather. Now
little gusts began to push the balloon from right to left, up and down.
From time to time the guide rope--a great rope dangling 100 yards below
our basket--would touch earth, and soon the basket, too, began to graze
the tops of trees.
What is called "guide-roping" thus began for me under conditions
peculiarly instructive. We had a sack of ballast at hand, and when some
special obstacle rose in our path, like a tree or a house, we threw out
a few handfuls of sand to leap up and pass over it. More than 50 yards
of the guide rope dragged behind us on the ground; and this was more
than enough to keep our equilibrium under the altitude of 100 yards,
above which we decided not to rise for the rest of the trip.
This first ascent allowed me to appreciate fully the utility of this
simple part of the spherical balloon's rigging, without which its
landing would usually present grave difficulties. When, for one reason
or another--humidity gathering on the surface of the balloon, a downward
stroke of wind, accidental loss of gas, or, more frequently, the passing
of a cloud before the face of the sun--the balloon came back to earth
with disquieting speed, the guide rope would come to rest in part on the
ground, and so, unballasting the whole system by so much of its weight,
stopped, or at least eased, the fall. Under contrary conditions any too
rapid upward tendency of the balloon was counterbalanced by the lifting
of the guide rope off the ground, so that a little more of its weight
became added to the weight of the floating system of the moment before.
Like all human devices, however, the guide rope, along with its
advantages, has its inconveniences. Its rubbing along the uneven
surfaces of the ground--over fields and meadows, hills and valleys,
roads and houses, hedges and telegraph wires--gives violent shocks to
the balloon. Or it may happen that the guide rope, rapidly unravelling
the snarl in which it has twisted itself, catches hold of some asperity
of the surface or winds itself around the trunk or branches of a tree.
Such an incident was alone lacking to complete my instruction.
As we passed a little group of trees a shock stronger than any hitherto
felt threw us backward in the basket. The balloon had stopped short,
and was swaying in the wind gusts at the end of its guide rope, which
had curled itself around the head of an oak. For a quarter of an hour
it kept us shaking like a salad-basket, and it was only by throwing
out a quantity of ballast that we finally got ourselves loose. The
lightened balloon made a tremendous leap upward and pierced the clouds
like a cannon-ball. Indeed, it threatened to reach dangerous heights,
considering the little ballast we had remaining in store for use in
descending. It was time to have recourse to effective means, to open the
manoeuvre valve and let out a portion of our gas.
It was the work of a moment. The balloon began descending to earth
again, and soon the guide rope again rested on the ground. There was
nothing to do but to bring the trip to an end, because only a few
handfuls of sand remained to us.
He who wishes to navigate an air-ship should first practise a good
many landings in a spherical balloon--that is, if he wishes to land
without breaking balloon, keel, motor, rudder, propeller, water-ballast
cylinders, and fuel holders. The wind being rather strong, it was
necessary to seek shelter for this last manoeuvre. At the end of the
plain a corner of the forest of Fontainebleau was hurrying toward us. In
a few moments we had turned the extremity of the wood, sacrificing our
last handful of ballast. The trees now protected us from the violence
of the wind, and we cast anchor, at the same time opening wide the
emergency valve for the wholesale escape of the gas.
The twofold manoeuvre landed us without the least dragging. We set foot
on solid ground, and stood there watching the balloon die. Stretched
out in the field, it was losing the remains of its gas in convulsive
agitations, like a great bird that dies in beating its wings.
After taking a dozen instantaneous photographs of the dying balloon
we folded it and packed it in the basket with its netting folded
alongside. The little chosen corner in which we had landed formed part
of the grounds of the Chateau de la Ferrière, belonging to M. Alphonse
de Rothschild. Labourers from a neighbouring field were sent for a
conveyance to the village of La Ferrière itself, and half-an-hour later
a brake came. Putting everything into it we set off to the railway
station, which was some 4 kilometres (2-1/2 miles) distant. There we
had some work to lift the basket with its contents to the ground, as it
weighed 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds). At 6.30 we were back at Paris,
after a journey of 100 kilometres (more than 60 miles), and nearly two
hours passed in the air.