A NAUTICAL FIRE-BALLOON.
BY W. J. HENDERSON.
It was blowing fresh from the eastward and southward, and the Alice Tree, under two lower topsails, spanker, and a bit of head-sail, was roaring along on a taut bowline, and looking well up toward her course. That was as nearly due east as a good compass, a cool hand at the wheel, and an honest desire to cross the fiftieth meridian in latitude 40° 30' could make it. All the way from Sandy Hook Light-ship the stanch ship had leaned to a soldier's wind till the mid-watch of this day, and even now, under shortened canvas and with weather clews a-tremble, she was making eight knots an hour on her great circle track. The wind boomed out of the arching, creamy hollows of the two topsails, and hummed through the tense shrouds and back-stays.
Out forward the sweeping curve of the clipper bow swung swiftly upward, with bobstay and martingale dripping with sparkling brine, and again plunged down with a thunderous roar and a boiling of milk-white foam up to the hawse-holes. Ever and anon a hissing shower of iridescent spray would hurtle across the forecastle deck, and lose itself in the smother of yeasty froth that blew along the lee rail.
Up to windward the sea hardened itself against the luminous horizon in a steel-blue field of cotton-tufted ridges, leaping and falling in wide unrest. Overhead sheets of wreathing vapor rushed across the dense blue sky, and in and out of the rifts the dazzling white sun shot wildly as if in meteoric flight. Captain Elias Joyce leaned against the weather rail of his poop deck, and looked contented.
"It'll blow harder before it blows easier, Mr. Bolles," he said to his mate, "but it'll go to the south'ard."
"Ay, ay, sir," said the mate. "And I reckon we'll do very well as we are."
"Yes, let well enough alone," said the Captain. "Come, gentlemen, let's go to dinner."
The gentlemen were Joseph and Henry Brownson, the twin sons of the owner of the ship. They were making this voyage on a sailing-ship for health and recreation after a hard struggle with their final examinations at college. They were well used to the sea, and had served an apprenticeship in many a hearty dash around Brentons Reef Light-ship and the Block Island buoy. They were enjoying every minute of their voyage, but they had yet one great desire to gratify. They wished to get the Captain to spin them a yarn of some strange experience at sea. Up to the present time he had refused to accept their hints. But they had not yet abandoned hope. At the dinner table they renewed the attack, but without result. When the meal was ended, the Captain filled a pipe, and the conversation drifted in various channels. Henry spoke of college celebrations and the foolishness of sending up fire-balloons. The Captain took the pipe out of his mouth, blew a big cloud of smoke, and said, reflectively:
"Well, I don't know. I remember once when a fire-balloon turned out to be a mighty useful thing at sea."