4 o’clock p.m.—Wind on land, nil.
A pilot balloon launched at 2 o’clock. Rose to 109 yards; direction N. Speed from thirteen to fourteen feet per second. Evening, 7 p.m., S. wind, pretty strong in the upper regions.
Then a complete change, the north wind prevailing.
What, then, are we going to fail at the last moment?
Must we pack up this balloon, ready to take her flight to a land around which so many vain efforts have been made for centuries past?
“My kingdom for a horse!” cried Richard III., in one of those struggles in which the human wretch thinks he acquires so much glory by massacring his fellow-man and by spreading death in his path. And what would not the three hardy explorers have given for a breath of favourable wind, which would have enabled them to carry on the struggle they had commenced against the unknown!
What bitter reflections came into my mind!
In a smiling country, where everything bespeaks work and prosperity, where each one trusts to the future, happy in the labours undertaken, happy in his daily tasks, suddenly there arises this very wind so much longed for here, and in a few minutes the tempest in its blind fury has sown death and ruin where life and wealth were working together!
Here science stood in need of a little of this destructive wind, of ever so little, but none came.