“It is a good thing to have a friend in every place, even in the inferno,” she said. “I have a friend who is going up in that balloon. It must be terrible to go alone!”
Way was made for Engracia; Patsy and I followed, and took a good look at the balloon at close quarters. It was shaped like a globe with a stovepipe coming out of the bottom. The basket car was small and high, coming up to the armpits of Engracia’s friend, a man of average size. The color of the balloon was like a modern warship’s neutral gray, the tint most easily confounded with cloud or smoke. Patsy peeped inside the basket, hoping to see some interesting apparatus for steering or at least guiding the flight.
“Nothing inside,” he reported, “except a few bags of sand just like those:” he pointed to the sand bags hanging from the outer edge of the basket. “That,” he showed a small instrument shaped like a pedometer hanging in the shrouds, “is to measure the distance, and that to gauge the velocity of the wind.”
“What, nothing more? No modern contrivance to help them navigate the air?”
“Nothing but sand,” said Patsy. “It takes a lot of two kinds of sand.”
It was such a breathless afternoon: it seemed as if there could not be wind enough to lift the great captive swaying awkwardly in its ropes. The breeze must have come up without our noticing it, for there was a sudden commotion in the crowd, and we were all ordered to stand back. Engracia waved a last adieu to her friend.
“Abour!” she cried, as the balloon shot up to a great height. “If he had only taken some one with him!” There was something terrible in the loneliness of that solitary figure in the balloon.
In a few seconds another balloon shot up; it was perhaps lighter than the first, for it seemed to overtake it immediately. The two great balloons drifted nearer and nearer to each other; when just above our heads they noiselessly collided.
“Por Dios!” cried Engracia, and hid her face.
There was a slight depression in each balloon, then they sprang apart, like two vast rubber balls, and sailed off, each in a slightly different direction, neither the worse for the collision.