HOW I BECAME AN AËRONAUT
while flakes of snow, forming moment by moment under our eyes, fall in our drinking glasses.
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Showing how it began to fold up in the middle
I was finishing my little glass of liqueur, when the curtain suddenly fell on the wonderful scene of sunlight and azure. The barometer rose rapidly five millimeters, showing an abrupt rupture of equilibrium and a swift descent: probably the balloon had become loaded down with several pounds’ weight of snow, and had fallen into a cloud. We passed into the half darkness of the fog. We could still see our basket, our instruments, and the rigging nearest to us; but the netting holding us to the balloon was visible only up to a certain height. The balloon itself had completely disappeared, so that we had for the moment the delightful impression of hanging in the void without support—of having lost the last ounce of our weight.
After a few minutes of fall, slackened by throwing out ballast, we found ourselves under the clouds at a distance of 300 meters ( mile) from the ground. A village fled away from us. We took our bearings with the compass and compared our map with the immense natural one unfolded below. Soon we could identify roads, railways, villages, and forests, all hastening toward us from the horizon with the swiftness of the wind.
The storm which sent us downward marked a change of weather. Little gusts pushed the balloon to right and left, up and down. From time to time the guide-rope (a great rope hanging 100 meters long from our basket) touched the earth; and soon the basket itself grazed the tops of trees.
My first experience of what is called ‘‘guide-roping’’ was thus had under conditions peculiarly instructive. We had a sack of ballast at hand; and when some special obstacle rose in our path we threw out a few handfuls of the sand to pass over it. More than fifty meters (165 feet) of the guide-rope dragged behind us on the ground; and this was enough to keep our equilibrium under the altitude of 100 meters, above which we did not expect to rise for the rest of the trip. This first ascension allowed me to appreciate the utility of this simple device, without which the landing would usually present grave difficulties. When, for one reason or another (humidity gathering on the surface of the balloon, a downward stroke of wind, accidental loss of gas, or, more frequently yet, the passing of a cloud before the sun) the balloon comes back to earth with disquieting speed, the guide-rope comes to rest in part on the ground, and so—unballasting the whole system—stops or at least moderates the fall. Under opposite conditions the too-rapid upward tendency of the balloon is counteracted by the lifting of the guide-rope, the weight of which has now to be added to that of the floating system of the moment before.
