THE INDEPENDENT
like locomotive whistles and the yelping of stray dogs, are the only ones which penetrate to us. The human voice cannot mount up to these solitudes. Human beings look like ants along white lines that are highways.
While my gaze was still held fascinated a cloud masked the sun. It cooled the gas of our balloon, which obviously wrinkled and began descending, gently at first and then with accelerated speed, against which we struggled by throwing out ballast. Yes, I was frightened. I did not feel myself falling, but I could see the earth coming swiftly up to us; and I knew what that meant!
It was an idle emotion. A few pounds of ballast overboard not only stopped the mad career of the earth in our direction, but sent it down, down, down again away from us, and we found our equilibrium, this time above a plateau of clouds at about 3,000 yards. It was a wonderful sight. On the dazzling white cloud screen below us the sun cast shadows of the balloon and ourselves, magnified to giant size; and this in the exact-center of a magnificent rainbow.
As we could no longer see the earth by reason of this cloud screen, all sight sensation, even of movement, ceased. Were we standing still? Were we traveling at storm speed? We knew nothing. To learn the direction we were taking we had to drop below the clouds.
At the moment we began to see the earth again a gay peal of bells mounted up to us. It was the noon Angelus from some village belfry. I had brought up a little panier of hard boiled eggs, cold meats, cheese, ice cream, fruits, cakes, champagne, coffee and liquors, and I now experienced how delightful it is to lunch above the clouds in the nacelle of a spherical balloon.
No earthly dining room could possibly have such a decoration. The sun’s heat sets the clouds in ebullition, making them throw up rainbow jets of frozen vapor like fireworks all around the table. Lace-like spangles of the most delicate ice formation scatter themselves here and there, appearing out of nothing, and film-like flakes pop into existence under our very eyes, in our very drinking glasses.
Then, suddenly, all changed like the trick in the pantomime; and a somber drop scene fell on the fairy scene of sunlight, cloud billows and azure. The barometer rose rapidly 5 millimeters, showing a sudden rupture of equilibrium and a swift descent. Doubtless the balloon had become overweighed with some pounds of snow, and it was certainly falling into a cloud.
We passed into the dim darkness of the fog. We still saw our basket, instruments and the parts of the rigging nearest us; but the balloon had completely disappeared. So we had the strange and delightful sensation of hanging in the void without support, either above or below; of having lost our weight; of being nowhere! Really, it was strange beyond description.
We slackened the fall, as usual, by throwing out ballast, and came to equilibrium far, far below the clouds at scarcely more than 300 yards altitude. A village fled beneath us. We were scudding fast. We compared our route map with the immense natural map unfolding below us, and soon we could identify roads, railways, villages and forests—all hurrying toward us from the horizon with the swiftness of the wind itself.
The storm which had sent us down marked a change in the weather. Little gusts pushed the balloon from one side to the other and up and down. Again, and again the guide rope, dangling 100 yards below our basket, touched earth; and soon even the basket began to graze the tops of trees.
What is called “guide roping” thus began for me. M. Machuron and I each held a sack of ballast, and when some special obstacle rose in our path—a tree or house—one of us would throw out a few handfuls of sand, to make the balloon leap up and pass over it. More than half the guide rope dragged behind us, and so we scudded comparatively close to earth at a wonderfully even altitude.
But shortly, as we passed over a little group of trees, a shock threw us backward into the basket. The balloon had stopped short and was swaying in the gusts at the end of its guide rope, which had curled itself around the head of an oak. For fifteen minutes it kept us shak-
