As hours advanced, the blackness of night increased, and their impressions appear somewhat strange to anyone familiar with ordinary night travel in the sky. Mr. Monck Mason compares their progress through the darkness to "cleaving their way through an interminable mass of black marble." Then, presently, an unaccountable object puzzles and absorbs the attention of all the party for a long period. They were gazing open-mouthed at a long narrow avenue of feeble light, which, though apparently belonging to earth, was too long and regular for a river, and too broad for a canal or road, and it was only after many futile imaginings that they discovered they were simply looking at a stay rope of the balloon hanging far out over the side.
Somewhat later still, there was a more serious claim upon the imagination. It was half-past three in the morning, and the balloon, which, to escape from too low an altitude, had been liberally lightened, had now at high speed mounted to a vast height. And then, amid the black darkness and dead silence of that appalling region, suddenly overhead came the sound of an explosion, followed by the violent rustling of the silk, while the car jerked violently, as though suddenly detached from its hold. This was the idea, leading to the belief that the balloon had suddenly exploded, and that they were falling headlong to earth. Their suspense, however, cannot have been long, and the incident was intelligible enough, being due to the sudden yielding of stiffened net and silk under rapid expansion caused by their speedy and lofty ascent.
The chief incidents of the night were now over, until the dawn arrived and began to reveal a strange land, with large tracts of snow, giving place, as the light strengthened, to vast forests. To their minds these suggested the plains of Poland, if not the steppes of Russia, and, fearing that the country further forward might prove more inhospitable, they decided to come to earth as speedily as possible. This, in spite of difficult landing, they effected about the hour that the waking population were moving abroad, and then, and not till then, they learned the land of their haven—the heart of the German forests. Five hundred miles had been covered in eighteen hours from start to finish!
CHAPTER VII. CHARLES GREEN—FURTHER ADVENTURES.
All history is liable to repeat itself, and that of aeronautics forms no exception to the rule. The second year after the invention of the balloon the famous M. Blanchard, ascending from Frankfort, landed near Weilburg, and, in commemoration of the event, the flag he bore was deposited among the archives in the ducal palace of that town. Fifty-one years passed by when, outside the same city, a yet more famous balloon effected its landing, and with due ceremony its flag is presently laid beside that of Blanchard in the same ducal palace. The balloon of the "Immortal Three," whose splendid voyage has just been recounted, will ever be known by the title of the Great Nassau Balloon, but the neighbourhood of its landing was that of the town of Weilburg, in the Duchy of Nassau, whither the party betook themselves, and where, during many days, they were entertained with extravagant hospitality and honour until business recalled Mr. Hollond home.
Green had now made upwards of two hundred ascents, and, though he lived to make a thousand, it was impossible that he could ever eclipse this last record. It is true that the same Nassau balloon, under his guidance, made many other most memorable voyages, some of which it will be necessary to dwell on. But, to preserve a better chronology, we must first, without further digression, approach an event which fills a dark page in our annals; and, in so doing, we have to transfer our attention from the balloon itself to its accessory, the parachute.
Twenty-three years before our present date, that is to say in 1814, Mr. Cocking delivered his views as to the proper form of the parachute before the Society of Arts, who, as a mark of approval, awarded him a medal. This parachute, however, having never taken practical shape, and only existing, figuratively speaking, in the clouds, seemed unlikely to find its way there in reality until the success of the Nassau adventure stirred its inventor to strenuous efforts to give it an actual trial. Thus it came about that he obtained Mr. Green's co-operation in the attempt he now undertook, and, though this ended disastrously, for Mr. Cocking, the great professional aeronaut can in no way soever be blamed for the tragic event.
The date of the trial was in July, 1837. Mr. Cocking's parachute was totally different in principle from that form which, as we have seen, had met with a fair measure of success at the hands of early experimenters; and on the eve of its trial it was strongly denounced and condemned in the London Press by the critic whom we have recently so freely quoted, Mr. Monck Mason.
This able reasoner and aeronaut pointed out that the contrivance about to be tested aimed at obviating two principal drawbacks which the parachute had up to that time presented, namely (1) the length of time which elapses before it becomes sufficiently expanded, and (2) the oscillatory movement which accompanies the descent. In this new endeavour the inventor caused his machine to be fixed rigidly open, and to assume the shape of an inverted cone. In other words, instead of its being like an umbrella opened, it rather resembled an umbrella blown inside out. Taking, then, the shape and dimensions of Mr. Cocking's structure as a basis for mathematical calculation, as also its weight, which for required strength he put at 500 lbs. Mr. Monck Mason estimated that the adventurer and his machine must attain in falling a velocity of some twelve miles an hour. In fact, his positive prediction was that one of two events must inevitably take place. "Either the parachute would come to the ground with a force incompatible with the safety of the individual, or should it be attempted to make it sufficiently light to resist this conclusion, it must give way beneath the forces which will develop in the descent."