THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY DANGERS OF BALLOONING
One of the most astonishing adventures I had during this period of
spherical ballooning took place directly over Paris.
I had started from Vaugirard with four invited guests in a large balloon
constructed for me after I had tired of making solitary trips in the
little "Brazil."
From the start there seemed to be very little wind. I rose slowly,
seeking an air current. At 1000 metres (3/5 of a mile high) I found
nothing. At 1500 metres (one mile) we still remained almost stationary.
Throwing out more ballast we rose to 2000 metres (1-1/4 mile), when a
vagrant breeze started to take us over the centre of Paris.
When we had arrived at a point over the Louvre ... it left us! We
descended ... and found nothing!
Then happened the ludicrous thing. In a blue sky without a cloud, bathed
in sunlight, and with the faint yelps of all the dogs of Paris mounting
to our ears, we lay becalmed! Up we went again, hunting an air current.
Down we went again, hunting an air current. Up and down, up and down!
Hour after hour passed, and we remained always hanging, always over
Paris!
At first we laughed. Then we grew tired. Then almost alarmed. At one
time I had even the idea of landing in Paris itself, near the Gare de
Lyon, where I perceived an open space. Yet the attempt would have been
dangerous, because my four companions could not be depended on for
coolness in an emergency. They had not the ballooning habit.
Worst of all, we were now losing gas. Drifting slowly eastward hour
after hour one by one the sacks of ballast had been emptied. By the
time that we had reached the Vincennes wood we had begun to throw out
miscellaneous objects--ballast-sacks, the luncheon-baskets, two light
camp-stools, two kodaks, and a case of photographic plates!
All during this latter period we were quite low--not over 300 yards
above the tree-tops. Now, as we sank lower, we had a real fright. Would
not the guide rope at least curl itself around some tree and hold us
there for hours? So we struggled to maintain our altitude above the
tree-tops, until all at once a queer little wind gust took us over the
Vincennes racecourse.
"Now is our time!" I exclaimed to my companions. "Hold fast!"
With this I pulled on the valve rope, and we came down with celerity but
scarcely any shock.
Personally, I have felt not only fear but also pain and real despair in
a spherical balloon. It has not been often, because no sport is more
regularly safe and mild and pleasurable. Such real dangers as it has are
confined usually to the landing, and the balloonist of experience knows
how to meet them; while from its imaginary dangers in the air one is
regularly very safe. Therefore the particular adventure, full of pain
and fear, that I recall to mind was all the more remarkable in that it
occurred in high altitude.
It happened at Nice in 1900, when I went up from the Place Masséna in a
good-sized spherical balloon, alone, and intending to drift a few hours
only amid the enchanting scenery of the mountains and the sea.
The weather was fine, but the barometer soon fell, indicating storm. For
a time the wind took me in the direction of Cimiez, but as I rose it
threatened to carry me out to sea. I threw out ballast, abandoned the
current, and mounted to the height of about a mile.
Shortly after this I let the balloon go down again, hoping to find a
safe air current, but when within 300 yards of the ground, near the Var,
I noticed that I had ceased descending. As I had determined to land soon
in any case I pulled on the valve rope and let out more gas. And here
the terrible experience began.
I could not go down. I glanced at the barometer, and found, indeed, that
I was going up. Yet I ought to be descending, and I felt--by the wind
and everything--that I must be descending. Had I not let out gas?
To my great uneasiness I discovered only too soon what was wrong. In
spite of my continuous apparent descent I was, nevertheless, being
lifted by an enormous column of air rushing upward. While I fell in it
I rose rapidly higher with it.
I opened the valve again; it was useless. The barometer showed that I
had reached a still greater altitude, and I could now take account of
the fact by the way in which the land was disappearing under me. I now
closed the valve to save my gas. There was nothing but to wait and see
what would happen.
The upward-rushing column of air continued to take me to a height
of 3000 metres (almost 2 miles). I could do nothing but watch the
barometer. Then, after what seemed a long time, it showed that I had
begun descending.
When I began to see land I threw out ballast, not to strike the earth
too quickly. Now I could perceive the storm beating the trees and
shrubbery. Up in the storm itself I had felt nothing.
Now, too, as I continued falling lower, I could see how swiftly I was
being carried laterally. By the time I perceived the coming danger I was
in it. Carried along at a terrific rate, knocking against the tops of
trees, and continually threatened with a painful death, I threw out my
anchor. It caught in trees and shrubs and broke away. Had it been heavy
timber all would have been over with me. As it chanced, I was dragged
through the small trees and yielding shrubbery, my face a mass of cuts
and bruises, my clothes torn from my back, in pain and strain, fearing
the worst, and able to do nothing to save myself. Just as I had given
myself up for lost the guide rope wound itself around a tree and held. I
was precipitated from the basket, and fell unconscious. When I came to I
had to walk some distance until I met some peasants. They helped me back
to Nice, where I went to bed, and had the doctors sew me up.
During the early period when I was glad to make public ascents for my
balloon constructor I had undergone a somewhat similar experience, and
that by night. The ascent took place at Péronne, in the north of France,
one stormy afternoon, quite late. Indeed, I started in spite of thunder
threatening in the distance, a gloomy semi-twilight all around me, and
the remonstrances of the public, among whom it was known that I was not
an aeronaut by trade. They feared my inexperience, and wished me either
to renounce the ascent or else to oblige me to take up the balloon
constructor with me, he being the responsible organiser of the _fête_.
I would listen to nothing, and started off as I had planned. Soon I
had cause to regret my rashness. I was alone, lost in the clouds, amid
flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, in the rapidly-approaching
darkness of the night!
On, on I went tearing in the blackness. I knew that I must be going with
great speed, yet felt no motion. I heard and felt the storm. I formed a
part of the storm. I felt myself in great danger, yet the danger was not
tangible. With it there was a fierce kind of joy. What shall I say? How
shall I describe it? Up there in the black solitude, amid the lightning
flashes and the thunderclaps, I was a part of the storm.
When I landed the next morning--long after I had sought a higher
altitude and let the storm pass on beneath me--I found that I was well
into Belgium. The dawn was peaceful, so that my landing took place
without difficulty. I mention this adventure because it was made account
of in the papers of the time, and to show that night ballooning, even in
a storm, may be more dangerous in appearance than reality. Indeed, night
ballooning has a charm that is all its own.
One is alone in the black void--true, in a murky limbo, where one seems
to float without weight, without a surrounding world--a soul freed from
the weight of matter. Yet now and again there are the lights of earth to
cheer one. We see a point of light far on ahead. Slowly it expands. Then
where there was one blaze there are countless bright spots. They run in
lines, with here and there a brighter cluster. We know that it is a city.
Then, again, it is out into the lone land, with only a faint glow here
and there. When the moon rises we see, perhaps, a faint curling line of
grey. It is a river, with the moonlight falling on its waters.
There is a flash upward and a faint roar. It is a railway train, the
locomotive's fires, maybe, illuminating for a moment its smoke as it
rises.
Then for safety we throw out more ballast, and rise through the black
solitudes of the clouds into a soul-lifting burst of splendid starlight.
There, alone with the constellations, we await the dawn.
And when the dawn comes, red and gold and purple in its glory, one is
almost loth to seek the earth again, although the novelty of landing in
who knows what part of Europe affords still another unique pleasure.
For many the great charm of all ballooning lies here. The balloonist
becomes an explorer. Say that you are a young man who would roam, who
would enjoy adventures, who would penetrate the unknown and deal with
the unexpected--but say that you are tied down at home by family and
business. I advise you to take to spherical ballooning. At noon you
lunch peaceably amid your family. At 2 P.M. you mount. Ten minutes
later you are no longer a commonplace citizen--you are an explorer, an
adventurer of the unknown as truly as they who freeze on Greenland's icy
mountains or melt on India's coral strand.
You know but vaguely where you are and cannot know where you are
going. Yet much may depend upon your choice as well as your skill and
experience. The choice of altitude is yours--whether to accept this
current or mount higher and go with another. You may mount above the
clouds, where one breathes oxygen from tubes, while the earth, in the
last glimpse you had of it, seems to spin beneath you, and you lose
all bearings; or you may descend and scud along the surface, aided
by your guide rope and a dipperful of ballast to leap over trees and
houses--giant leaps made without effort.
Then when the time comes to land there is the true explorer's zest of
coming on unknown peoples like a god from a machine. "What country is
this?" Will the answer come in German, Russian, or Norwegian? Paris
Aéro Club members have been shot at when crossing European frontiers.
Others, landing, have been taken prisoners to the burgomeister or the
military governor, to languish as spies while the telegraph clicked to
the far-off capital, and then to end the evening over champagne at an
officers' enthusiastic mess. Still others have had to strive with the
dangerous ignorance and superstition even of some remote little peasant
population. These are the chances of the winds.
[Illustration: MOTOR OF "No. 1"]