In throwing out ballast or any small article from a balloon, a certain degree of caution is requisite, as a bottle or any similar object falls with such velocity that if it were to strike the roof of a cottage it would go right through it. We are told that Gay-Lussac, in an ascent in 1804, threw out a common deal chair from the height of 23,000 feet. It fell beside a country girl who was tending some sheep in a field, and as the balloon was invisible, she concluded—and so did wiser heads than hers—that the chair had fallen straight down from heaven, a gift of the Virgin to her faithful followers. No one was sceptical enough to deny it, for there was the chair, or rather its remains. The most the incredulous could venture to do was to criticise the coarse workmanship of the miraculous seat, and they were busy carping and fault-finding with the celestial upholstery, when an account of M. Gay-Lussac’s aërial voyage was published, and extinguished at once the discussion and the miracle.
In 1868 M. Tissandier and a professional aëronaut made a voyage over the North Sea in a balloon called the Neptune. The machine made a splendid ascent, and was soon floating in mid air buoyant as a feather at the height of four thousand feet, bound, as the aëronauts fondly hoped, for the coast of England. But in this they soon found that they had counted without their host; the Neptune, impelled by the wind, was soaring away in the direction of the middle of the German Ocean. This most inauspicious goal struck terror for a few moments into their ardent souls; but they were soon reassured by observing that the wind in the atmospheric regions below them was setting towards the shore, and that by sinking into this lower current of air they could return whenever they chose. Thus yielding to the current of their fate, they allowed themselves to be carried out to sea, floating like gossamer into the very heart of cloudland. Gorgeous scenes, more splendid, more airy, more delicate than the most glowing visions of the Arabian Nights, rose around them. It was like the enchantment of a vivid dream. They took no note of time; every sense was absorbed in that of vision; they even forgot to be hungry, but gazed, and gazed, and gazed again upon the wide waste of waters that spread beneath them, glowing like one vast molten emerald; its glories half seen, half hid by the multitude of cloud mountains and valleys that rose fluctuating and fantastic on every side, fair with luminous half-lights, delicately lovely with pearly iridescence shading into silvery gray. Thus hovering miles above the world and its commonplace cares, they enjoyed an interval of transcendent delight, rudely broken in upon by the professional aëronaut, a creature of appetite, who pulled the valve-rope unbidden, thus causing them to descend from their cloudy paradise into the grosser atmosphere that immediately surrounds the earth, where they at length bethought themselves—of lunch. In spite of thick thronging poetic fancies and transcendental raptures, they made a very tolerable repast, M. Tissandier finishing his portion of the fowl by tossing a well-picked drumstick overboard. For this imprudence the professional was down upon him immediately. ‘Do you not know,’ quoth he, ‘that to throw out ballast without orders is a very serious crime in a balloon?’ M. Tissandier was at first inclined to argue the point; but on consulting the sensitive barometer he was fain to admit that in consequence of the disappearance of the chicken-bone, the Neptune had made an upward bound of between twenty and thirty yards. Very fine calculation—if true.
Luncheon satisfactorily over, they again soared upward out of sight and sound of earth, and soon found themselves once more in their cloudy Elysium, but with a change; mist and fog hemmed them round instead of the breeze and sunshine, but did not make them less happy. The Neptune was to them a little Goshen, a lonely floating temple of peace, dedicated to contentment and ease. The serenity of their souls was depicted in their faces. Tranquil and easy, they took no thought of the morrow, no, nor of the next hour, when suddenly there broke upon their ears, like a faint far-distant murmur, a sound subdued, monotonous, and yet terrible. Was it the voices of the spheres? No, gentle reader; it was a strain more awful still—it was the voice of the sea. In a moment the listless ease, the sweet do-nothingness of those idlers in cloudland was gone, clean washed away by the swish and swell of that intrusive ocean, which stretched beneath them, painted by the sunset with a thousand glowing tints of beauty, which they had neither leisure nor tranquillity to admire. Fortunately the wind was setting inshore; and amid the fast falling shades of night, the anxious aëronauts were fortunate enough to descry a cape crowned with a lighthouse. Every nerve was strained to reach it; and after a few moments of intense anxiety and effort, the anchor was let go. It caught in a sandhill, and the Neptune once more moored to earth, rolled over on its side, and was after some difficulty secured.
The spot where they landed was curiously enough only a few yards from the reef of rocks where the first aëronaut, Pilatre de Rosier, was dashed to pieces in 1785.
Sometimes, like other bubbles, the balloon bursts; and when this little accident happens, say four thousand feet up in the air, it is of course attended with unpleasant and inconvenient consequences, as was the experience of MM. Fonvielle and Tissandier, who with a party of nine made an ascent in a veteran balloon called ‘the Giant.’ Merry as larks they soared into the air, keenly enjoying the beauty of the day, the novelty of the pastime, the sense of liberty, of entire freedom from all wonted conventionalisms or accustomed restraints. Then with what a keen school-boy edge of appetite they fell upon their chicken, which seems the appropriate food for balloons, eaten from newspapers, which served as plates, and washed down with soda-water and Bordeaux. Champagne was inadmissible; an unruly cork might have popped unawares through the silken tissues of the envelope, and thus hastened a catastrophe. But let us not anticipate. The banquet was over, the board, that is to say the newspapers were cleared, and ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul’ had begun. All was bright airy genial cordiality and mirth, when suddenly the attention of the travellers was attracted to a white smoke issuing from the sides of the balloon. Whence came this ominous mist, this preternatural cloud, that began to enshroud them? One reckless youth said: ‘It is the Giant smoking his pipe.’ And so it was with a vengeance! Then followed a few terrible moments, in which each after his own fashion bade the world farewell, and found it marvellous hard to do so. The clouds, the sky, the pleasant sunlight, was that their last look at each? It seemed so; but while they were still shivering dizzy and aghast upon that awful threshold, the balloon fell, and strange to relate, fell safely, and they were saved.
A few days afterwards Monsieur Tissandier made another ascent in the Neptune with Monsieur de Fonvielle, and they were busily engaged conducting some scientific experiments when a sharp crack like a sudden quick peal of thunder fell upon their astounded ears, and the professional aëronaut exclaimed in a loud startled voice: ‘The balloon has burst!’ What followed, we give in Monsieur Tissandier’s own words: ‘It was too true; the Neptune’s side was torn open and transformed suddenly into a bundle of shreds, flattening down upon the opposite half. Its appearance was now that of a disc surrounded with a fringe! We came to the ground immediately. The shock was awful. The aëronaut disappeared. I leaped into the hoop, which at that instant fell upon me, together with the remains of the balloon and all the contents of the car. All was darkness. I felt myself rolled along the ground, and wondered if I had lost my sight, or if we were buried in some hole or cavern. An instant of quiet ensued, and then the loud voice of the aëronaut was heard exclaiming: “Now come all of you from under there.”’ And one after another they emerged unhurt into the sunshine, in time to bid farewell to a few fragments of the balloon which were floating away upon the rising wind.
Such experiences must as a rule be trying to the nerves of most people, and we must be so plain as say that travelling by balloon is at best an act of extreme danger and temerity. In order to utilise balloons, it is evident that some sure means of guiding them must be invented; and this discovery or anything approaching to it has yet to be made. In fact, a balloon is still, after about a hundred years’ experience, little better than a toy.
LIGHTNING-CONDUCTORS.
Many of our readers may have wondered why tall buildings such as church steeples and factory chimneys are provided with thin rods of iron running down their sides; and may have been at a loss to understand their meaning. Their use is to conduct lightning harmlessly to the ground during thunder-storms. We have, however, had warnings enough that a bad lightning-conductor is worse, as regards the security of the building it is supposed to protect, than none at all. Unless the electrical connection with the earth be perfect, the conductor may invite the very danger which it ought to turn aside. Rusted chains, imperfect fittings, and the absence of a sufficient thickness of untarnished metal, are responsible for much mischief. Lightning, properly dealt with, is robbed of much of its terrific power; but when its natural path is blocked, and its swift circuit interrupted, it inevitably rends and tears and burns, scathing and scattering all substances before its resistless might.