“I was busily engaged,” says M. Tissandier, “in stowing away the loose bottles, that might have injured us seriously in case of bumping, when I heard a sharp cracking sound, and Duruof [their pilot] immediately cried out, ‘The balloon has burst!’ 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. Duruof 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 Duruof was heard exclaiming: ‘Now come from under there, you fellows!’ We hastened to obey the voice of the commander, and found that the car had turned over upon us, and shut us up like mice in a trap!”
What next? They had fallen
from a height of about two hundred feet, and yet were not much bruised: but the very wind that had caused their disaster helped them out of it; in fact, their balloon was transformed into a kind of gigantic kite, and let them down pretty easily.
But let us get up above the clouds again. That is the place really to enjoy life. Once there, one hardly thinks about coming down or its difficulties; the earth is out of sight, and almost out of mind. We are sailing along, perhaps at a quicker rate than that of an express train; but the motion is as imperceptible as that immensely more rapid one of the magnificent planetary projectile on which we are whirling through space. For the clouds are moving with us, and, though they are breaking up and changing their forms, we cannot see that they move as a mass. Occasionally, through a break, we may see the earth, or be saluted from it, as M. Flammarion once was to his great surprise, by cries of “A balloon! a balloon!” when he was quite unaware of there being any hole through which the balloon could be seen. Sounds, by the way, will go up much better than they will come down; the reason of this is the lesser density of the air above. Of course we feel no wind, for the wind is taking us with it: so that even the cold at any ordinary height and at any season usual for ballooning is not troublesome. Sometimes, indeed, it is warmer aloft than below; on the occasion of the eighty-mile-per-hour voyage, just mentioned, the thermometer was actually at eighty-two degrees at the height of a little over half a mile, while below it stood at fifty-five. The balloon is as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar; M. Flammarion assures us that he once filled a tumbler with water till it was brimming over, so that not another drop could be
added; but not a drop was spilled by the movement of their vehicle, though it was travelling with the speed of a locomotive, and alternately rising and falling to the extent of several hundred yards.
His account of a journey from Paris into Prussia, made in a beautiful moonlight summer night, gives a most delightful idea of this most agreeable of all modes of travelling. They left Paris about two hours before sunset, and had a fine afternoon sail. The weather was cloudy, and rain came on at half-past nine; but what of that? One is quite superior to rain in a balloon, or, if not, may easily become so. They throw out a little ballast, and rise above the rain-cloud. The cloud soon breaks away, finding that it cannot embarrass their movements, and the country beneath becomes visible. They see a bright light in a house, and hear the sound of dance music played by an orchestra. It is a ball. They cross the frontier at Rocroi. The lines of its fortifications are dimly seen in the moonlight. No examination of passports or luggage for them. (On another excursion, however, we are told, when they were sailing along near the ground, two gendarmes rode up in hot haste, calling out, “Vos passe-ports, messieurs!” but were dismissed with a polite request to step up and verify them, accompanied by a shower of ballast.) The moon comes out brightly as they enter Belgium. They sail over the Meuse, and M. Flammarion greets enthusiastically the home of his youth:
“Beautiful river, I welcome thee! Near thy banks, on the old mountain which overlooks thy fertile plain, I was born. Little did I think, whilst playing some childish game within sound of the murmur of thy ripple, that I should some day cross over thy stream suspended to
this light, aerial globe! Thy peaceful waters flow towards the Rhine and the North Sea, into which they fall, and are lost for ever. Thus is it with our own brief existence, flowing towards the regions of cold and mystery, to vanish some day in that unknown ocean into which we must all descend.”
Certainly, it is a pity that he takes such a gloomy view of life.
The pilot, M. Godard, rouses him from his reverie.