Page:The Independent (1905-06-01).pdf/64

1228 ing world—a soul freed from the trammels of matter!

Now and again there come the lights of earth to cheer you. You see a point far below ahead. It slowly expands, until where there came to be a blaze there are countless bright spots. They run in lines, with here and there a cluster. It is a city

Then it is out again over the lone land. When the moon rises you see, perhaps, a faint curling line of gray. It is a river, with moonlight or starlight falling on its waters. There comes a flash and a faint roar; it is a railway train, the locomotive’s fires illuminating for a moment its smoke as it rises. Then you throw out ballast and rise through the dank black clouds to a soul-lifting burst of starlight. And there, alone with the constellations, you await the dawn.

When the dawn comes, red and gold and purple, one is almost loath to seek the cheery, busy earth again, altho the novelty of landing in who knows what part of Europe affords still another unique pleasure. For many the greatest charm of spherical ballooning lies here. The spherical balloonist becomes an explorer. Are you young? Would you roam and tempt adventures? And are you tied down? You may still penetrate the unknown and deal with the unexpected. Take to spherical ballooning, as do the youth and beauty of the Paris Aero’ Club. At noon you lunch paceably with your family. At 2 p.m. you dart into the air; ten minutes later you are no longer a commonplace, law-abiding citizen. You are an explorer in unknown seas of light!

You know but vaguely where you are, and you do not know where you are going to bring up. Something depends on your skill and experience. The choice of altitude and air currents is yours, but when the moment comes to land you have the true explorer’s zest of coming on unknown peoples, who are not expecting you—a god from a machine!

“ What country is this?” Will the answer come in French, German, Italian, Norwegian, or even Russian? Paris Aero Club members have actually been shot at crossing European frontiers.

Yes, the air is still for most people an unknown element; and I who know it remain astonished at the world of different sensations one experiences in it as one goes as a spherical or dirigible balloonist. The realization of this wonderful difference flashed on me, at a moment I recall well, as I was steering a straight, swift course along the Mediterranean coast in my No. 6 during the memorable winter of 1902.

I was by this time an experienced dirigible balloon captain—it was the winter following my winning of the Deutsch Prize in Paris; I had no task to perform, nothing to prove, and I could give myself up to the pleasures of aerial navigation in by far the swiftest airship I had yet constructed. As I steered my course I remember saying to, myself:

" How different are these from the sensations of the spherical balloonist! It is true that he has the earth flying backward beneath him at a great speed, but he knows that he is powerless. The sphere of gas above him is the plaything of the air current in which it finds itself ; and he cannot change its direction.”

In my dirigible balloon I could see myself flying over the sea, and I had my hand on a helm that made me master of my direction in the splendid course I was making. Once or twice, to test the power, without other motive, I shoved the helm around, while going at full speed. Delightfully obedient, the airship’s helm swung to the other side, and I was speeding in a new diagonal course that would have brought me to shore in a few minutes had I continued it. But these maneuvers only occupied a few instants each, and each time I swung myself back on a straight line to the entrance of the Bay of Monaco, from which I had come and to which I must return to the balloon house built for me by the Prince of that bay and the land around it, for I was flying homeward like an eagle.

To those watching my return, from the terraces of Monte Carlo and Monaco town (as they told me afterward), the airship increased in size at each moment, like a veritable eagle bearing down on them. As the wind was coming toward them they could hear the low crackling buzz of my motor a long distance away. Faintly now their own shouts of enouragement came to me. They grew