About noon we found by comparing our maps with the streams below that we had passed into Pennsylvania; and not long afterwards we descried Oil City set upon the creek, with all its hills covered with derricks and oil tanks.
Speaking of Oil City, reminds me of a rather funny incident: For a couple of years I had been in correspondence with a young man who resided there, and who was also a journalist. His name and mine were just the same. I had promised faithfully to stop and see him at any time chance might bring me near his home. I took one of the envelopes and wrote a regret, dropping it over the city. It was picked up in the road and handed to him, but he always insisted that I had broken my promise unreasonably.
At the rate in which Oil City was left behind we knew our pace was very rapid, though to us it all seemed like a dead calm, for we kept just even with the wind.
The Professor said we could reach New England by midnight if the wind held and it didn’t grow cloudy; but alas! for the past hour we had been watching a little fleecy nebulous bit of mist that seemed, like a spirit, to spring from the nothingness of the blue ether, growing constantly, and attracting other cloudlets which came toward it from all quarters of the heavens and were swallowed up. A growing, whirling wall of pearly gray mounted and spread its shadow over half the earth.
We threw out sand and mounted above it. Then it arose toward us again. It seemed as though we could reach our hands into its surging depths. Over went seats, baskets, the tent—everything we could spare, and I’m not sure the Professor didn’t glare at one of his companions with malicious and deadly intent.
The truth rushed upon us that we were racing with a storm.
It was of vital importance to keep in the sun, for the moment the shadows below could place their chilly spell upon our steed, the gas would chill and condense, and we would drop! drop! swiftly to the earth. At last it came, and we knew it was inevitable. Below us we could hear the crashing of thunder reverberating away into the depths of the black storm masses, and the lightnings every moment lit the weird scene with a grandeur but few mortals have ever witnessed. For a brief moment we hung suspended like Mahomet’s coffin in the centre of a great cave of pearl. Shall I ever forget that glimpse of heavenly splendor? A single shaft of sunlight broke through its walls and then died like the last ray of hope. Then downward we rushed! A mile nearer earth within the first minute! As the air grew denser we fell more gradually. Our long drag-rope was out, weighing perhaps three hundred pounds. Now we were closely enshrouded by leaden clouds. The rain ran down the bag in rivulets and trickled upon our heads.
“Look, oh look!” cried the Professor.
We were now below the storm, and along its dense ceiling could see its broad extent. We were above the mountains. No towns nor even houses could be discovered, only dense forests, through which the gale howled as among the rigging of a ship upon a winter sea.
Very quickly our drag-rope touched the tree-tops and began to glide among the swaying pines.