DANGERS OF BALLOONING
I would listen to nothing, and started off as I had planned. Soon I had cause to regret my rashness. I was alone, lost in the clouds, amid flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, in the rapidly-approaching darkness of the night!
On, on I went tearing in the blackness. I knew that I must be going with great speed, yet felt no motion. I heard and felt the storm. I formed a part of the storm, I felt myself in great danger, yet the danger was not tangible. With it there was a fierce kind of joy. What shall I say? How shall I describe it? Up there in the black solitude, amid the lightning flashes and the thunderclaps, I was a part of the storm.
When I landed the next morning—long after I had sought a higher altitude and let the storm pass on beneath me—I found that I was well into Belgium. The dawn was peaceful, so that my landing took place without difficulty. I mention this adventure because it was made account of in the papers of the time, and to show that night ballooning, even in a storm, may be more dangerous in appearance than reality. Indeed, night ballooning has a charm that is all its own.
One is alone in the black void—true, in a murky
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