At the Institution on the following day, I was at first disappointed, as the proceedings appeared to me of an informal, and easy going kind.
The room where we met was redolent with the perfumes of tobacco, and coffee was being served, but I soon found out that the proceedings were of a philosophical character, being assisted with explanations in English from Herr Buchmann, who spoke our language well.
After the lecture I tried to get away, feeling much ashamed of my inability to converse in German, but I was retained by Herr Buchmann, who drew me out on my own speciality, and I was glad to find by questions put from different parts of the room that most of those present could express themselves intelligibly in my native tongue.
“Had I any views of my own in writing?” Yes, I had by me a pamphlet, which was read, and which referred to military ballooning. My opinions so far commended themselves to those present that I was invited to become an honorary member, and of course signed my name.
By the time announcements had gone forth as to the first ascent, I had made so many acquaintances, that I positively required a new hat after so often raising my old one, according to the approved local fashion which they managed with so much ease and frequency, that I wondered how they could do so with such little wear and tear to the rim.
Mr. B—— informed me that he never could attain to that mode of salutation, he prided himself on being a Briton to the back bone, and satisfied himself, if not the ladies by a semicircular move of the right hand from his chest outwards. B—— was a favourite, I found, notwithstanding his brusque address. I began to feel afraid that he would neglect his own interests by devotion to our cause.
One day I overheard a protest from one of his best patrons, which terminated with “that confounded balloon,” but Dick always turned up when he was wanted, and now and again when he had better have been engaged elsewhere; he was a typical cockney of the unaffected, commercial class, never having taught his own language until he took up his abode in Elberfeld.
Very early on the morning of the ascent, I mean by 5 a.m., the voice of Herr Küpper might be heard over the housetops, and along the valley of the River Wupper. Mr. B—— was in attendance, and trying to soothe the lessee’s occasional irritability, but he had been upset by one Peter, a Kellerman who was thought to have imbibed his master’s beer, brewed on the premises. Out of twenty workmen who had been told off for our assistance, this Peter had been placed by me to hold the neck part of the balloon, where the gas passes in through a hose.
After doing his best for some time, poor Peter’s eyes began to roll rather wildly, when Küpper, with more haste than discretion, sent him to the right about, which caused Peter to stumble against the balloon; Küpper, terribly indignant at this, gave him such a lift under the “stern sheets,” as the sailors say, that Peter impelled by the motive power of the governor’s left leg, flew, as it were, out of the enclosure; the incident caused some merriment, and at the same time it induced me to examine the connecting links of the hose pipe. They were all right, but below the hoop of the safety valve, Peter, in his eagerness to hold fast, had sent his nails through the silk, and had made a hole, so that the poor fellow was taking in the fumes of gas, which accounted for his stupefaction.
This explained—it is due to Küpper to say that Peter was recalled, cheered up, and told to have his coffee and something with it, on a table in the garden.