Page:Sim pall-mall-magazine 1904-01 32 129.pdf/20

14 balloon; and any injury to the cylindrical form of my air-ship balloon by loss of gas might prove fatal.

While over the housetops I felt that it would be bad to fall; but as soon as I left Paris and was navigating over the forest of the Bois de Boulogne, the idea left me entirely. Below there seemed to be a great ocean of greenery, soft and safe. It was while over the continuation of this greenery in the grassy pelouse of the Longchamps racecourse that my balloon, having lost a great deal of its gas, began to double on itself. Previously I had heard a noise. Looking up, I saw that the long cylinder of the balloon was beginning to break. Then I was astonished and troubled. I wondered what I could do.

I could not think of anything. I might throw out ballast. That would cause the air-ship to rise again, and the decreased pressure of the atmosphere would doubtless permit the expanding gas to straighten out the balloon again, taut and strong. But I remembered that I must always come down again, when all the danger would repeat itself and worse even than before, from the greater quantity of gas I should have lost. There was nothing to do but to go down instantly.

I remember having the sure idea: "If that balloon cylinder doubles any more, the ropes by which I am suspended to it will work at different strengths, and will begin to break, one by one, as I go down!" For the moment I was sure that I was in the presence of death.

Well, I will say it frankly, my sentiment was almost entirely that of waiting and expectation. "What is coming next?" I thought. "What am I going to see and know in the next few minutes? Whom shall I meet first when I am dead?" The thought that I might be meeting my father so soon thrilled me. Indeed, I think that in such moments there is no room either for regret or terror. The mind is too full from looking forward. One is frightened only so long as one has still a chance.

The descent became a fall. Luckily I was falling in the neighbourhood of the grassy turf of Bagatelle, where some big boys were flying kites. A sudden idea struck me. I cried down to them to grasp the end of my 60-yard-long guide-rope, whose extremity had already touched the ground, and to run as fast as they could with it against the wind !

The bright young fellows grasped the idea and the rope-end at the same lucky instant. The effect of this help in extremis was immediate and such as I had hoped it might be. By the manɶuvre we considerably lessened the velocity of the descent, and so avoided what might otherwise have been broken hones, to