As it was, all their efforts were in vain. The gigantic globe could not be raised above six feet from the ground. It had not power enough to carry up a cat—much less a man. In short, it was a failure—one more added to the long list of their dark disappointments!
For more than an hour Karl continued to keep his fire ablaze. He even tried faggots of the resinous pine: in hopes that by obtaining a greater strength of caloric he might still succeed in causing the balloon to soar upward; but there was no perceptible difference in the effect. It bobbed about as before, but still obstinately refused to ascend.
At length, with patience exhausted and hopes completely crushed, the engineer turned away from the machine which he had taken so much pains in constructing. For a moment he stood irresolute. Then heaving a sigh at the recollection of his wasted labour, with sad, slow step he departed from the spot. Caspar soon followed him—fully participating in the feeling of grievous disappointment. Ossaroo took leave of the inflated monster in a different fashion. Drawing near to it, he stood for some seconds contemplating it in silence—as if reflecting on the vast amount of seam he had stitched to no purpose. Then uttering a native ejaculation, coupled with a phrase that meant to say, “No good either for the earth, the water, or the air,” he raised his foot, kicked the balloon in the side—with such violence that the toe of his sandals burst a hole in the distended eel-skins; and, turning scornfully away, left the worthless machine to take care of itself.
This task, however, it proved ill adapted to accomplish: for the disappointed aeronauts had not been gone many minutes from the ground, when the heated air inside, which had for some time been gradually growing cooler, reached at length so low a temperature, that the great sphere began to collapse and settle down upon the embers of the pine faggots still glowing red underneath. The consequence was that the inflammable skins, cords, and woodwork coming in contact with the fire, began to burn like so much tinder. The flames ran upward, licking the oily eel-skins like the tongues of fiery serpents; and when the ci-devant aeronauts looked back from the door of their hut, they perceived that the balloon was ablaze!
Had the accident occurred two hours before, they would have looked upon it as the saddest of calamities. Now, however, they stood regarding the burning of that abandoned balloon, with as much indifference as is said to have been exhibited by Nero, while contemplating the conflagration of the seven-hilled city!
Chapter Fifty Three.
Another spell of despair.
Never, during all the days of their sojourn in that “Valley of Despond,” did our adventurers feel more despondence, than on the afternoon that succeeded the bursting of their great air-bubble—the balloon. They felt that in this effort, they had exhausted all their ingenuity; and so firmly were they convinced of its being the last, that no one thought about making another. The spirits of all three were prostrate in the dust, and seemed at length to have surrendered to despair.