It was a dazzling contrast; over our heads was the golden and intense brilliance of an unclouded blue sky, the transparent azure of pure air inundated with light, and under our feet lay deep and changeable night—a black, weltering mass of uneasy chaos, that seemed as if set in motion by the hands of giants; a nameless thing without a form or colour that rolled and eddied and swarmed—the Tohu-bohu of Genesis.
It might have been an army of Titans whipping and tormenting the clouds, that were piled up and shattered on one another, and again piled up and shattered endlessly.
And over this feverish chaos we heard the rumble of thunder, while the violent and icy wind drove the clouds as a wolf does the sheep when it falls upon a flock. Our poor balloon, though it was great and heavy, carrying, as I have said, not less than a ton, was as light as a feather on the wings of the hurricane. It danced madly up and down, shaken and tossed about like a fragile skiff. So we rolled over this stormy sea without compass or rudder, fascinated by the grandeur and the strangeness of the sight.
How long were we in the storm?
I cannot say; but suddenly the aeronaut cried, “Monsieur, we are sinking!” And the balloon, without showing any breakage to explain such an accident, sank rapidly, or rather dropped perpendicularly, like a mass.
We were then still above the clouds, which were shedding torrents of rain on to the earth, and it was impossible for us to see through the thick night which lay cold and damp under our feet. We tried in vain to find our bearings and to guess how or where the balloon would strand us. Would we be cast on terra firma or into the sea; on mountains or on to the trees of a forest?
It was a critical moment.
Lighten the balloon, quickly! And in a moment we were all occupied in lifting our ballast—big sacks of sand—out of the hold, and the inhabitants of the country over which we were passing must have been astonished at seeing a sudden rain of gravel mixed with the showers of water which were drowning the countryside.
But we could not deal quickly enough with the ballast, and the balloon continued to sink. It descended with a rapidity that made us shudder and drove us to work with feverish activity. We heaved over the sacks of ballast as briskly as real sailors who have done nothing else all their lives. Each of us laboured at our task, and the sand fell like hail.
Suddenly the daylight disappeared and darkness enveloped us. We were inundated by a cold, intense fog and pierced to the skin by icy dampness. We were running through a veritable aerial tunnel, to use a permissible metaphor. The clouds which the storm had just before been rolling at our feet were now all round our balloon and us. When the balloon had passed through them, dripping with rain and frost, I saw with amazement that we were just above an immense wood which pointed its spikes at us like so many threatening spears. We were inevitably about to land in the middle of this wood and in the branches of its trees.