Yet, for all his cold courage and dauntless determination, it is not quite certain in what spirit Andrée set forth. It has often been said that he was a stubborn, self-willed, and self-esteeming enthusiast, who had worked up a vast confidence in himself and an overweening passion for his project through his flying and experimenting. Others have pictured him as an infatuated scientific theorist, bound to prove himself right, or die in the attempt. And there is still the other possibility that the man was goaded into his terrifying attempt, in spite of his own late misgivings, by the ridicule of the public and the skepticism of some critics. He felt that he would be a laughingstock before the world and a discredit to his eminent backers if he failed to set out, it is said. But of this there is no evidence, and it remains a fact that Andrée’s conclusions were sufficiently plausible to engage the attention and credence of a considerable number of scientists, and his enthusiasm bright enough to attach two others to him in his great emprise.
In the middle of the afternoon of July 11, 1897, Andrée got into the gondola of his car, tested the ropes and other apparatus, and was quickly joined by his two assistants, Nils Strindberg and K. H. F. Frankel, the latter having been chosen to take the place of the defected Ekholm.
At a little before four o’clock the cables were cast off, after Andrée had sent his farewell message, “a greeting to friends and countrymen at home.” The great bag hesitated and careened a few moments. Then it shot up to a height of several hundred feet, turned slowly about, with its three ropes dragging first on the ice and then in the water of the sea, and set out majestically for the northwest, carried by a steady slow breeze.
The little group of men on the desolate arctic island stood late through the afternoon, with eyes straining into the distance, where the balloon hung, an ever-diminishing ball against the northern horizon. What doubts and terrors assailed that watching and speculating crowd, what burnings of the heart and moistenings of the eyes overcame its members, as they watched the intrepid trio put off upon their unprecedented adventure, the subsequent accounts reveal. But the imagination of the reader will need no promptings on this score. A little more than an hour the ship of the air remained in sight. Then, at last, it floated off into the mist, and the doubt from which it never emerged.
Doctor Andrée had devised two methods of sending back word of his situation and progress. For early communication he carried a coop of homing pigeons. In addition, he had provided himself with a series of specially designed buoys, lined with copper and coated with cork. They were hollow inside and so fashioned as to contain a written message and preserve it indefinitely from the sea water, like a manuscript in a bottle. To the top of each of these buoys was fixed a small staff, with a little metal Swedish flag. The plan was to release one of the small buoys, as each succeeding degree of latitude was crossed, thus marking out, by the longitude observations as well, the precise route taken by the balloon in its drift toward or away from the pole.
About a week after Andrée’s departure one of the carrier pigeons returned to Danes Island, with this message in the little cylinder attached to its legs:
“July 13, 10.30 P. M.—82.20 north latitude; 15.5 east longitude. Good progress toward north. All goes well on board. This message is the third by carrier pigeon.
“Andrée.”
The earlier birds and any the balloonists may have released after the night of the thirteenth, about fifty-five hours out from Danes Island, must have been overcome by the distance and the excruciating cold. None except the one mentioned ever reached either Danes Island or any cotes in the civilized world.
All over the earth, men stirred by the vivid newspaper accounts of Andrée’s daring undertaking, waited with something like bated breath for further news of the adventuring three. It was not expected that the brave Swedes could reach civilization again, even with every turn of luck in their favor, in less than two months. Even six months or a year were elapsed periods not considered too long, for the chances were that the balloon would land in some far northern and difficult spot, out of which the three men would not be able to make their way before winter. That being so, they would be forced to camp and wait for spring. Then, very likely, they could find their way to some outpost and bring back the tidings of their monumental feat.