The Literary World Seventh Reader

by Unknown

The view of the earth at this period of my ascension was beautiful indeed. To the westward, the northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and deeper tint of blue. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible, extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be found, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the surface of the earth.

At a quarter-past eight, being able no longer to draw breath without the most intolerable pain, I proceeded forthwith to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to the condenser. I had prepared a very strong, perfectly air-tight gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient size, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to say, the bag was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides and so on, up to the upper rim where the net-work is attached. Having pulled up the bag and made a complete inclosure on all sides, I was shut in an air-tight chamber.

In the sides of this covering had been inserted three circular panes of thick but clear glass, through which I could see without difficulty around me in every horizontal direction. In that portion of the cloth forming the bottom was a fourth window corresponding with a small aperture in the floor of the car itself. This enabled me to see straight down, but I had been unable to fix a similar window above me and so I could expect to see no objects directly overhead.

The condensing apparatus was connected with the outer air by a tube to admit air at one end and by a valve at the bottom of the car to eject foul air. By the time I had completed these arrangements and filled the chamber with condensed air by means of the apparatus, it wanted only ten minutes of nine o’clock. During the whole period of my being thus employed, I endured the most terrible distress from difficulty of respiration, and bitterly did I repent the foolhardiness of which I had been guilty in putting off to the last moment a matter of so much importance. But having at length accomplished it, I soon began to reap the benefit of my invention. Once again I breathed with perfect freedom and ease—and indeed why should I not? I was also agreeably surprised to find myself, in a great measure, relieved from the violent pains which had hitherto tormented me. A slight headache, accompanied by a sensation of fulness about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was nearly all of which I had now to complain.

At twenty minutes before nine o’clock, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the barometer. The instrument then indicated an altitude of twenty-five miles, and I consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the earth’s area amounting to no less than one three-hundred-and-twentieth part of the entire surface.

At half-past nine, I tried the experiment of throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve. They did not float as I had expected, but dropped down like a bullet and with the greatest velocity, being out of sight in a very few seconds. It occurred to me that the atmosphere was now far too rare to sustain even feathers; that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great speed, and that I had been surprised by the united velocities of their descent and my own rise.

At six o’clock P. M., I perceived a great portion of the earth’s visible area to the eastward involved in thick shadow, which continued to advance with great rapidity, until at five minutes before seven the whole surface in sight was enveloped in the darkness of night. It was not, however, until long after this time that the rays of the setting sun ceased to illumine the balloon, and this fact, although, of course, expected, did not fail to give me great pleasure. In the morning I should behold the rising [v]luminary many hours before the citizens of Rotterdam, in spite of their situation so much farther to the eastward, and thus, day after day, in proportion to the height ascended, I should enjoy the light of the sun for a longer and longer period. I now resolved to keep a journal of my passage, reckoning the days by twenty-four hours instead of by day and night.

At ten o’clock, feeling sleepy, I determined to lie down for the rest of the night; but here a difficulty presented itself, which, obvious as it may appear, had escaped my attention up to the very moment of which I am now speaking. If I went to sleep, as I proposed, how could the air in the chamber be renewed in the meanwhile? To breath it more than an hour at the farthest would be impossible; or, even if this term could be extended to an hour and a quarter, the most ruinous consequences might ensue. This dilemma gave me no little anxiety; and it will hardly be believed that, after the dangers I had undergone, I should look upon this business in so serious a light as to give up all hope of accomplishing my ultimate design, and finally make up my mind to the necessity of a descent.

But this hesitation was only momentary. I reflected that man is the slave of custom and that many things are deemed essential which are only the results of habit. It was certain that I could not do without sleep; but I might easily bring myself to feel no inconvenience from being awakened at intervals of an hour during the whole period of my repose. It would require but five minutes to renew the air, and the only difficulty was to contrive a method of arousing myself at the proper moment for so doing.

This question caused me no little trouble to solve. I at length hit upon the following plan. My supply of water had been put on board in kegs of five gallons each and ranged securely around the interior of the car. I unfastened one of these and, taking two ropes, tied them tightly across the rim of the wicker-work from one side to the other, placing them about a foot apart and parallel, so as to form a kind of shelf, upon which I placed the keg and steadied it. About eight inches below these ropes I fastened another shelf made of thin plank, on which shelf, and beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small pitcher was placed. I bored a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher and fitted in a plug of soft wood, which I pushed in or pulled out, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tightness at which the water, oozing from the hole and falling into the pitcher below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. Having arranged all this, the rest of the plan was simple. My bed was so contrived upon the floor of the car as to bring my head, in lying down, immediately below the mouth of the pitcher. It was evident that, at the expiration of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run over and to run over at the mouth, which was somewhat lower than the rim. It was also evident that the water, falling from a height, could not do otherwise than fall on my face and awaken me even from the soundest slumber in the world.