Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/236

220 surprising regularity, many persons escaped from the horrors of the siege by means of them. Several aeronauts met with startling adventures, but for exciting and perilous incidents none can compare with one which befell M. Nadar. He left Tours for Paris, in his balloon the "Intrépide," one morning in October, 1870, at six o'clock. At eleven he was in view of the capital, and while floating about 3,000 mètres above Fort Charenton, a second balloon was observed on the horizon. M. Nadar at once displayed the French flag, and the other balloon responded by exhibiting the same colours. Gradually the two balloons approached one another, being drawn in the same direction by the same current of air. When they were only a short distance apart, several explosions were heard. The strange aeronaut continued to fire upon M. Nadar's balloon, which began to descend rapidly. The French flag had by this time been taken in by the other balloon, and the Prussian colours were exhibited instead. Those who were watching the affair from the French fort below, and who now saw the character and object of the pursuer, cried out that Nadar was lost. But they were mistaken. He had scrambled from the car up the network of the balloon, on the first shot from the enemy, apparently to stop a fissure; he now descended as the balloon righted itself, and on a quantity of ballast being thrown out, again rose high into the air. Shots were then fired in rapid succession from the "Intrépide" into the Prussian balloon, which suddenly fell to the earth with headlong rapidity. On reaching the ground, a detachment of Uhlans, who had watched the combat from the plain, picked up the aeronaut, and bore him to the Prussian outposts. M. Nadar then descended in safety at Charenton.

The problem of flying through the air on wings has yet