“The balloon must manœuvre badly,” she said.
Stellan flung out ballast, perhaps more than was necessary and they rose quickly into silent and radiant space over the bright and dazzling autumn coast landscape. It was really wonderfully beautiful with the spray of gold that the leafy trees made amongst the dark pines and the deep solemn September blue of the water in the bays—which to the far-penetrating gaze of those above shivered in iridescence of algæ-green, seaweed-brown and shimmering gneiss-red nearer inshore in the shallower water. In a narrow smooth belt of calm water a toy steamer drew behind it a silver shimmering fan of dwarf-like waves. And far away in the east along the strangely banked up horizon the sea stretched like a low endless blue ridge.
But most wonderful of all was the silence and the stillness, the incomparable, mighty calm in a balloon that moved with the wind and in which a candle flame would burn as steadily as in a closed room.
“Strange ... it is like sitting in a glass cupboard,” said Miss Lähnfeldt in a low voice and there was after all involuntary admiration in her voice. But then she added: “Though I must say I thought it would be more exciting....”
Stellan bit his lip: he was not in the mood for enjoying anything beautiful just now. He felt like a stage manager who is responsible for effect before a critical and spoilt public. He thought of Peter, his affairs, marriage—without any enthusiasm for the last.... He felt almost hostile to the woman by his side. Her affected indifference irritated him. He could not manage to pay her any sort of attention. He felt like a partner who dances out of time and has nothing to whisper into his partner’s ear. Annoyed, he tapped the barometer. It sank, though the balloon was sinking slowly. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun suddenly disappeared. Behind them in the west the sky was clouded. The air began to grow a cold, whitish grey, and clouded over, they no longer saw the earth below them. In an incredibly short time they had become enveloped in a dense cloud.
Stellan did not descend, as was his duty with an approaching storm when he was so near the sea. He was a desperado. Miss Lähnfeldt was going to have an experience, that was all. He threw out several sacks of ballast, which disappeared in long brown streaks in the fog below them.
His manœuvring was not quite planless. He had observed that the wind in the upper strata was several degrees more southerly and he began to think of the Åland islands.
Now they were suddenly out in the sunshine again, in the cold dazzling sunlight over an enormous shimmering sea of cloud. They soared alone in a dazzling white, ever changing, chaos of snow mountains and lakes of fog—millions of years before human life existed....
“I have seen this before in Switzerland,” said Miss Lähnfeldt shivering with cold.
The balloon had risen rapidly and lost much gas. It soon began to sink again through the cloud world, which now grew grey. When it cleared up below them they were already out over a nasty grey, white-crested sea. A very strong wind was blowing.