I remained standing in order to see better, but what I saw was terrifying. A thick and endless forest extended under our eyes, showing thousands of branches like so many terrible defences ready to tear us. Nowhere was there a clearing which might give us hope.
The balloon continued falling, in spite of its being lightened, with all the speed of its enormous weight. I could not help looking, like a man who cannot help himself and who sees himself being hurled into an inevitable abyss.
“If we could only pass the wood!” I had scarcely uttered these words when a terrible noise was heard. We were shaken by a frightful shock, which seemed as if it would dislocate all our limbs. The car was thrown among the trees and bounded against them, breaking them into small fragments. It was a terrible fall, but when it came to the point and I felt the first signs of the end I gave a sigh of relief. “This is it, at last—this is the end!” The unknown, which one fears and trembles at and cannot avoid, is always more terrible than the reality, once one has seen the latter face to face.
But all, unfortunately, was not yet over, and still greater and more violent turns of fortune were to await us. The car alone had crashed against the trees, breaking them with the violence of the shock, but the balloon still floated intact over the basket, presenting its whole volume to the wind. It dragged us with terrific force over the trees, which broke under the shock and at the same time held back the car entangled in the broken and twisted branches.
It was a terrible conflict! The balloon tried to rise, but the trees held us back and the car was dragged over the trees, bounding, smashing, and annihilating everything it met in its frantic course.
CHAPTER VI
THE FALL
The danger was here, and our position seemed absolutely desperate. Death is not the most fearful thing in the destinies of man. It was when we first embarked on the “Vauban” that we offered the sacrifice of our lives, knowing perfectly well that we were exposing ourselves to the danger of falling on the road. We had, therefore, foreseen the possibility of death; but to die torn by a blind force, to be dragged over trees and not to know if the branches will first wrench off your head or your arms, is a thing more painful than death. And there was no physical power nor intelligence—no means whatever which might save us. We had nothing to fall back on, absolutely nothing but hazard, as blind as the force which was playing with our existence. The situation caused a strange thing to happen in my imagination, which I have never been able to explain and which I should like at this point to describe.
For a few moments I had a sort of vision. There is nothing extraordinary in this. It can be easily explained. But what I at least find more difficult to explain and what up till now I have never been able to understand is that I was at the same time absolutely and entirely master of myself, in full control of my intelligence, my will, and my self-command. I felt the vision, knowing that it was a vision, as an interested observer of an extraordinary phenomenon.