Careers of Danger and Daring

by Cleveland Moffett

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 aëroplanes—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.

"A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK—WHICH, ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY."

Professor Myers, like most aëronauts, 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 aëronaut 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 aërial 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 aëronaut in a suspended saddle and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flapping aëroplanes (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 aëronaut 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 aëronaut 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.