Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/492

 detail, is St. James's Park; on the south side of the river, St. Thomas's Hospital may be discerned, by the foot of Westminster Bridge; and by the other end of the same bridge are the Houses of Parliament.

We are now in the midst of such a silence as exists nowhere on earth. In the most solitary parts of the land the air is always filled with unnoticed sounds—the running, working, and flying of insects; the rustle of leaves or grass; or the trickle and splash of water. Here there is nothing—absolutely nothing—for minutes together. One talks in order to make some sound and put an end to the odd feeling of soundlessness; and the voice makes the surrounding stillness the more intense. Then, perhaps, comes faintly from below the toot of a steam-tug's signal, or the muffled shriek of a locomotive engine; and all seems stiller than before.

The streets are mere alternating lines of black and white, and it takes a keen eye and a long sight to detect, even on the largest buildings, of which some sort of a side view is possible, the specks that mean doors and windows.

The balloon has turned half round since starting, so that he on the seat first looking south now looks north, and vice versâ. This motion, like all other motion in this wonderful machine which carries us where the wind wills, is quite imperceptible. We are in a perfect stillness, while clouds above and the earth below move this way or that, as may be the case. The air is not the air of London, but that of the Lake Country on a clear day—bright, clean, and fresh. And so we pass on, over the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.

Presently all below us grows just a little indistinct, as with a thin mist. At the same time the air grows cooler, and moist to the face. Above there is no blue sky—beyond the edge of the great gas bag it is white; below it is foggier. Then all is densely white around, above, and below. We are in a cloud.

Suddenly we bound above the cloud, and all is warm sunshine. Below, the thick, glistening, down-white clouds stretch away right and left in heavy folds; and on this great white surface lies, twenty or thirty yards off, the clear, sharp-cut shadow of our balloon, perfect in every part. Above, the sky is deep and blue, flecked in a place or two with tiny streaks of cloud, which, Mr. Spencer tells us, must be 20,000 feet from the earth. We ourselves have not quite reached 8,000 feet.

Here we float in the great solitude, a little planet all by ourselves, with the blue sky and the sun above, and below the rolling clouds, which, in their season, bless and afflict the world far away lower still, with rain, hail, thunder, and lightning. It is a wrench to the mind at such a time as this to bring the thoughts back to so prosaic an article as a warranted detective camera with all the newest improvements, but it has to be done. For are not the readers of waiting to see what clouds are like from above?

We know that a photograph will not do justice to the splendour before us, but we touch the button; and we have our seventh picture, shadow and all complete.

There is a smell of gas, which is a sign that the balloon has attained the utmost height consistent with the weight it has to carry. Up through the opening we can see into the balloon above, and through this