The Balloonist

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_ I

HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK, WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT

I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him "Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings, or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.

All these callings (and some others) Myers has pursued with eagerness and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry, sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me some time ago.

Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is certainly a queer place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really, half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three thousand feet for his afternoon "skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the celebrated aeronaut (also the professor's wife), making an ascension now and then from the front lawn in a chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons.

And in winter, should you explore the upper rooms of the house, you would find all the balloons tucked away snugly in cocoons, as it were, fast asleep, ranged along the attic floor, each under its net, each ticketed with a record of its work, marked for good or bad conduct after it has been tested by master or mistress.

For weeks at a time in the experiment season a captive balloon hovers above the Frankfort farm, say twelve hundred feet up, and the tricks they play with that balloon would draw all the boys in the country, if their parents would let them go. Three guy-ropes hold the balloon steady like legs of an enormous tripod, and straight down from the netting a fourth rope hangs free. Now, imagine swinging on a rope twelve hundred feet long! They do that often for tests of flying-machines or aeroplanes--swing off the housetop, and sail away in a long, slow curve, just clearing the ground, and land on top of a windmill at the far side of the grounds. That's a swing worth talking about! And fancy a man hitched fast to this rope by shoulder-straps, and as he swings flapping a pair of great wings made of feathers and silk, and trying to steer with a ridiculous spreading tail of the same materials. The professor had a visit from such a man, who had spent years and a fortune in contriving this flying device, which, alas! would never fly.

Professor Myers, like most aeronauts, insists that traveling by balloon, for one who understands it, is no more perilous, but rather less so, than ordinary travel by rail or trolley or motor carriage. He points out that for thirty-odd years he and his wife have led a most active aeronaut existence, have done all things that are done in balloons, besides some new ones, and got no harm from it--some substantial good rather, notably an aerial torpedo (operated by electricity from the ground), which flies swiftly in any desired direction, its silken fans and aluminum propeller under perfect control from a switchboard; also the "skycycle" balloon, which lifts the aeronaut in a suspended saddle and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flapping aeroplanes (these driven by hands and feet), to make a gain on the wind, when going with it, of ten or twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to go against the wind, but selecting currents from the many available ones that favor his purpose. "What is the use," says he, "of fighting the wind when you can make the wind fight for you? People who take trains or boats wait for a certain hour or a certain tide, in the same way we wait for a certain wind current, and there is never long to wait, for the wind blows in totally different directions at different altitudes."

"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about these varying currents?"

"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds and by observations with kites and other instruments. And we would soon know much more if experimenters would work on these lines of conquering nature by yielding to her rather than opposing her."

In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there were many, we went first into the spectacular side of ballooning, the more obviously interesting part, stories of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling adventure, of the fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles in sixty minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the English aeronaut who leaped from his car to death in the sea that a comrade might be saved through the lessened weight, of two lovesick Frenchmen who duelled with pistols from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped in wonder from the earth and shuddered when one silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down to death with principal and second. And many more of that kind which, I must say, leave one far from convinced on the non-danger point.

Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things about balloons--this, for instance, that the rapid rise of an air-ship makes an aeronaut suffer the same pain and pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows, only now the air presses from inside the head outward. And relief from this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by repeatedly opening the mouth and swallowing.

And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. The balloon is always standing still to the person in it, while the earth rushes madly along, forty, sixty, ninety miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile the ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deepening bowl, while the horizon sweeps up like a loosened spring. Then presently this illusion passes, and you see everything flat. There are no hills any more, nor villages; no towers nor steep descents, only a level surface, marked charmingly in color, sometimes in wonderful mosaics, and strangely in light and shade. At the height of two miles nothing is familiar; you might as well be looking at the moon, for all you can recognize. Roads become yellowish lines; rivers brownish lines (and the water vanishes); a mountain-range becomes a shaded strip, with less shade on one edge (where the sun is) than on the other; a forest becomes a patch of color; a town another patch. There is scarcely any difference between water and land, and you see to the bottom of a lake, so that the configuration of its bed in valley and hill are apparent through the color and the shading. This singular disappearance of water bodies, for it amounts to almost that, has an evident importance.

"I'll tell you what we did on Lake Ontario," said the professor, "as a result of observations I made there from a balloon. In sailing over the lake on one occasion I remarked a number of small shaded spots which puzzled me. I could not imagine what they were. Finally, with the help of powerful field-glasses, I made them out to be wrecks sunk at various depths, and I realized that Lake Ontario, and indeed all the great lakes, abound in vessels which have gone down during centuries and never been recovered. No one can estimate the treasure which lies there waiting for some one to reclaim it. And I saw that it is a perfectly simple matter to locate these wrecks from a balloon, and to prove this I organized a modest wrecking expedition, and indicated to the diver where he was to go down. Down he went at that point, and found the wreck I had seen, and we pumped good coal out of her by hundreds of tons. What I did then on a small scale might be done on a large scale by any one willing to undertake it."

Of course I asked the professor why it is that an aeronaut can see down into a lake better than, say, an observer in a boat, and he explained that there is a great gain in intensity of terrestrial illumination when the viewpoint is at a height, because the sun's rays converge toward the earth, the sun being so many times larger, and therefore (this is his theory) a man lifted above the earth gets many more solar rays reflected to him from a given area than he would get if nearer to that area. In a word, it is a matter of optics and angles, but, the professor declares, most assuredly a fact.

Never before these talks did I realize how busy an aeronaut is, how much there is to do in a balloon. Besides attending to valve-cords and ballast there is the barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can you know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly as you rise, slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand feet. Rising or falling, you know the worst or the best there. Sometimes the needle sticks, the barometer will not work, and you must cast overside pieces of tissue-paper to see by their rise or fall if you are going up or down. By your senses alone you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling, or your distance from the earth. That is most deceiving. Then you must have your watch ready to reckon your speed, so many thousand feet up or down in so many seconds, and your map spread out (nailed to a board, and that lashed fast), to tell where you are, and your compass out to fix the north and south points, for a balloon twists slowly all the time, twists one way going up and the other way coming down. Nobody knows just why this is, unless it be the unequal drawing of the seams as the fabric swells and shrinks.

"I always keep the mouth of my balloon within easy reach," said the professor, "and play with it as an engineer does with his throttle-valve. Sometimes I even tie it shut when I am sailing, but that is dangerous."

"Why dangerous?"

"Because the balloon might ascend suddenly, and the expanding gas burst it."

"Can you see up into the balloon," I asked, "through the mouth?"

"Of course you can, and a beautiful sight it is. You look up through a round window, twenty inches or so in diameter, into the great bag, swelled out fifty or sixty feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so that every line and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you see a spread of gold and amber melting away in changing colors to the shaded parts. The balloon seems to be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel that your balloon is alive."

"Does it make any noise?"

"Usually not. Now and then there is a creaking of the basket or a rustle of fabric, as you pass from one wind current to another, but as you drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an hour and beaten it."

"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?"

"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. You seem to be at the very point where the lightning starts and the thunder-crash is born. All about you are roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up on you and down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I never heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, it is a common thing for operators on the ground even in fair weather to get shocks of atmospheric electricity down the anchor ropes of captive balloons."

Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of exciting times reporting the great yacht races from captive balloons (with reporters turning seasick in the plunging basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called parhelions) cast on clouds, and wonderful light effects, as when a marveling aeronaut looks down upon a sea of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through black clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath.

I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, say above three miles, the voice almost fails to serve, or, rather, the rarefied air loses in great part its power of voice transmission, so that in the vast silent spaces of the sky one aeronaut must literally shout to another in the same basket to make himself heard. One would say that the great, calm heavens resent the chattering intrusion of noisy little men.

II

WHICH TREATS OF EXPERIMENTS IN STEERING BALLOONS

IN all their experiments at the farm, Professor Myers and Mme. Carlotta have worked on individual lines, he striving of late years to perfect his skycycle (which is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging of propellers and fans underneath), while she has been content to gain skill in steering a balloon of ordinary shape by merely moving her body and utilizing varying air-currents, for the wind blows in different directions as you ascend.

It is remarkable how the position of an aeronaut's body may alter a balloon's movements. It is possible, for instance, to make a balloon ascend or descend, without touching valve or ballast, by a simple change of position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from edge to edge of the basket, and by throwing your weight first on one foot and then on the other you will give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you, and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hundreds of feet. Or if you would make it descend (all this the professor explained to me), stand with your feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide apart so that the fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway your hips forward as far as you can, then back as far as you can, and keep doing this. Now the wriggling process is reversed; and this time the basket goes first, "tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends.

This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Carlotta to pass easily from one train of clouds to another, and, by long study of these cross-moving aerial trains, she is able to pick out the one she wants for a certain destination with almost the precision of a foot-passenger selecting his particular street-car or changing from one to another. And in descending she has learned to steer forward or back, to left or right, by tipping the basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to take. The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board as a ship follows her rudder.

An almost incredible instance of the skill attained by Carlotta in these experiments was furnished some dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made an ascension never forgotten by the people of that city. It was a grand occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's gift of the Crystal Palace to her loyal subjects, and Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty-five thousand people, as was estimated, were packed inside the Exposition grounds to see the aeronaut rise to the clouds. And there at the appointed time stood Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude about her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt over a gymnasium suit, and made an attractive picture with her fine figure and golden-bronze hair. So thought various city dignitaries, who chatted with her admiringly while the crowd surged about them.

Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching the manoeuvers of some Indians hired by a committee to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles distant, where it had been filled. This was rather against the professor's judgment, for the Rideau River, flowing by the grounds, offered an obstacle that could be overcome only with the help of canoes and tow-lines; and to paddle a big balloon across a river, a fresh-filled, hard-tugging balloon, is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. And in spite of all their skill these Indians found themselves presently lifted into the air, canoes and all (oh, they were badly frightened Indians!), not quite clear of the water, but high enough to make it doubtful if they would ever reach shore, and highly interesting to the crowd which pressed down to the river, even into the river, in well-meant efforts to help, and dragged the balloon up the bank and along toward the platform with such eagerness that they tore great rents in it that let out the gas in volumes.

In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon became the center of a struggling mass of people, who slowly pressed in from all sides to see what the matter was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill with those at that point; and had not Carlotta acted on a flash of inspiration there would surely have been disaster in that merciless crush. She looked over the shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw the danger--saw women held helpless and fainting in that jam of bodies; saw one way, and only one, to save the situation, and took that way. Stepping off the platform, she ran lightly and swiftly over heads and shoulders, packed solid, and came to the balloon. Such was the people's fright that they scarcely felt her pass.

"You can't go up," cried her husband; "the balloon is a wreck."

"I must go up," she answered; "if I don't these people will be crushed to death."

"There's a hole in her big enough to drive a team through," he protested; but already she was in the basket, and a great cheer arose.

"It's better to risk one life than many," she answered with decision, and, turning to the crowd, motioned them to loose the car. In their wonder the mad multitude forgot their fear, and the struggling quieted. All eyes were now on the balloon; one woman's courage had quelled the panic. The danger to the crowd was past, to the woman just beginning.

"Wait a moment," shouted Professor Myers; "you must have more ballast." But in the din of voices she misunderstood him and cast out the last bag. Then, with a great heave and a flapping of its torn sides, the balloon wrenched itself free and shot upward, a cripple soaring with its last strength. Up and up it went, higher and higher as the small store of gas expanded. That tattered balloon, with its seams gaping open, raised itself somehow two miles over the city of Ottawa, and then almost immediately began to fall. The gas stayed in just long enough to lift the broken bag, and then left it to dash downward. Professor Myers, heart-sick on the ground, turned his eyes away, sure that he had seen his wife alive for the last time.

But Carlotta was of no such mind. She had saved the crowd, now she would save herself; and even as the balloon dropped with frightful speed, she put her plan into action. Swinging herself up on the netting, she caught the flapping silk above a long tear, and drew it down with all her weight until it reached the car. Instantly the air rushed in underneath, and bellied out the fabric into a great umbrella, a parachute improvised from a ripped balloon. Now they were slowing up; they had put the brakes on, and now they were soaring easily, drifting with the wind. Carlotta drew a long breath of relief and looked down. They were still a mile above ground. She had the runaway in hand, but where should she land him? Most aeronauts would have been thankful enough to get down alive anywhere; she proposed to do a feat of steering as well. No doubt there was some gas in the upper part of the bag to help her, but in the main she was guiding a parachute; and she guided it so skilfully by tipping the foot-board forward or back, to left or right, that she landed finally in a clump of evergreen-trees, some fifteen miles from Ottawa, that she had selected as the very place she proposed to land. And great were the rejoicings when it was known that she had come to no harm.

The story had an interesting sequel the following year, when Carlotta made another ascension from the same place.

"Where will you land this time?" one of the committee asked her.

Carlotta looked at the clouds a moment, then, smiling, said, "If you like, I will land exactly where I did last year."

This they all declared impossible, for the wind was strong in just the opposite direction; but Carlotta insisted she would land in that clump of evergreens and nowhere else. And she kept her word. She had observed that at a certain height the wind was favorable to her purpose, and by the same tactics of seeking the right wind-currents and by the same clever foot-board tipping she reached the point she was steering for, to the general wonder and admiration.

My acquaintance with Professor Myers has given me some light on a question often in my mind; that is, what kind of children these men have who follow careers of danger and daring. Will the son of a steeple-climber climb steeples? Will the daughter of a lion-tamer be afraid of a mouse? And so on. Of course, with both father and mother aeronauts, as in this case, it would be strange indeed if their child did not love balloons; and so it has turned out, for Miss Aerial Myers, now a girl in her teens, has already made various ascensions, and enjoys nothing better than soaring aloft on her father's skycycle, which she steers skilfully. Her first experience of a voyage in the air is memorable for two facts, that it nearly brought destruction to herself and her mother, and drew attention to an important but little-known fact in ballooning science.

It was some years ago, at the Syracuse County Fair, and a balloon race had been advertised between Carlotta and young Tysdell, an assistant of Professor Myers. For this event an enormous crowd had gathered on the grounds. And now (by what tears and pleadings who can say?) Miss Aerial, aged eleven, had persuaded her too fond mother to take her along, and off they went, amid cheers and wavings, with a strong breeze blowing, and the child peering down at the dwindling earth over the basket-side. She watched the roads change into yellow streaks, and the hills swing up from back of the horizon, and the clouds spread away below them like a sea. She watched her mother take readings of compass and barometer, and as the wind swept them along to new view-points she would cry out, "Here comes another town, mama!" and clap her hands as the town raced by.

Tysdell won the race, having ballast in plenty to throw out, while Carlotta had little, since the extra lifting-power of her balloon was needed for Miss Aerial. Now, the difficulty of managing a balloon is much increased if you have no ballast, for then you cannot rise at will to enter a higher wind-current blowing the way you want to go, but must drift where the current you are in may take you. And the current they were in took them (such is the perversity of things) straight toward a deep and dangerous lake. Carlotta saw where they were going, but was powerless to prevent it. She could not throw Miss Aerial overboard like a sand-bag to make the balloon go higher, although she did throw overboard everything else that was movable, even to her jacket and shoes. Then, having done all that was possible, she waited, clutching the basket-sides with anxious fingers, and wondering if there was any way to safety.

Suddenly an idea came to her, and she scanned the heavens for Tysdell's balloon. No sight of it anywhere. Tysdell was three miles away, hidden by clouds. Nevertheless she lifted her voice and sent forth a loud cry, calling his name. Immediately the answer came, quite distinct. She explained their peril, and asked Tysdell if he could come to them. He said he would try, and questioned her where they were and what wind-currents had borne them. Carlotta told Tysdell to what height he must drop (she knew her own height by the barometer), and in a very few minutes, being able to rise and fall as he pleased, he was near the two other air-sailors, and got his balloon down by the lake-side in time to help them ashore when they struck, as presently they did. The basket splashed the water, then skipped along the surface under the drag of the balloon, and was caught finally in the arms of a tree that reached out from the bank. And the only harm done was the spoiling of Miss Aerial's best frock!

Here was a case of conversation carried on easily between two balloons a mile or so above the earth and three miles apart. But other experiments made by Mme. Carlotta show that talking between balloons may go on over much greater distances, a reach of nearly eight miles having been accomplished on one occasion near Ogdensburg, New York. The explanation of this phenomenon is perfectly simple. Each balloon, while it is speaking, acts as a huge megaphone for the other, and each balloon, while it is listening, acts as a huge sounding-board for the other; and the tighter the balloons are kept under pressure of gas, the easier it is to make these great silken horns (for such they are) throw forth and receive the messages. It should be noted that this facility for voice transmission does not exist at great heights because of the rarefied air. At a mile above earth, however, this difficulty is not presented, and it may be that a superior kind of wireless telegraphy will be introduced some day by the use of talking balloons. Why not?

III

SOMETHING ABOUT EXPLOSIVE BALLOONS AND THE WONDERS OF HYDROGEN

ONE day the professor told me about some rainfall experiments with balloons that he conducted years ago for the government. There was a theory to be tested that loud explosions at a height will make the clouds pour down water, and some gentlemen in the Department of Agriculture were anxious to set off as loud an explosion as possible, say a thousand feet up in the air. Professor Myers received this commission, and proceeded at once to Washington with a gas-balloon twelve feet in diameter.

"Don't you think that balloon is rather small?" asked one of the gentlemen.

"No," said Myers; "I should call it rather large."

The other man shook his head. "I'm afraid it won't make noise enough to test our theory."

"Well," said the professor (I can see his eyes twinkling), "if this balloon doesn't make noise enough we'll get a bigger one."

They took the balloon some miles out of Washington (the professor insisted on this), filled it with a terribly explosive mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, and sent it up about a quarter of a mile, with an anchor-rope holding it and a wire hanging down to a little hand-dynamo or blasting-machine. As they made ready to turn this dynamo, Professor Myers lay flat on his back, eyes glued to the balloon, confident but curious. The handle turned, a spark jumped at the other end, and the ball of silk seemed to swell enormously and then vanish with a flash of a thousand shivers of silk. On this came the sound--a smashing and tearing blast louder than any thunder-crash or roar of cannon. It flattened men to the ground, killed hundreds of little fish in a stream near by (bursting their air-bladders), knocked over a bowling-alley like a house of cards, frightened cattle, and brought down rain in torrents within eight minutes. The Agricultural gentlemen were more than satisfied, and adopted the professor's system for extended rainfall experiments--only these (for obvious reasons) were removed to the lonely and arid plains of distant Texas.

"It wasn't much fun living down there," said the professor; "but we got rain whenever we wanted it."

"What would happen," I inquired, "if a very large balloon filled with this explosive mixture were set off over a crowded city?"

The professor shook his head in his awed contemplation of this possibility. "It would work fearful destruction. If large enough (and there is no difficulty in obtaining such a size), it would wipe out of existence whole blocks of houses and the people in them. It would destroy an army."

In the course of our talks I discovered a mystic side, very unexpected, in the professor's nature. He used to speak of hydrogen, for instance, with a certain almost reverence, as if it were something endowed with life and consciousness, a powerful spirit, one would say, not merely a commonplace product of chemistry, a gas from a retort.

"I have often wondered," he said one day, "as my basket has swept me along, what there is in this silken bag above me that lifts me thus over mountains and cities. I look up into the balloon through the open mouth, and I see nothing; I hear nothing; I smell nothing. None of my senses answer any call; yet somehow, strangely, in a way I can't explain, I perceive a presence. It would not be at all the same to me were the balloon filled with air, though it would be the same to all my senses. Again and again I have noted this thing, that hydrogen makes itself known to men when they are near it."

He paused a moment as if to observe my attitude, to see if it were one of scoffing. I made no remark, but begged him to go on.

"After all," he continued, "even the books allow to hydrogen properties that are very amazing. It is the lightest of all things; it passes through and beyond all things; it is the nearest approach we know of to absolute nothing. Who can say that it is not related to the land of nothing, to--" He hesitated.

"You mean?" said I.

"I don't know what I mean. I only wonder. Take this case that happened at Ogdensburg, New York, during an ascension we made there. We had filled the balloon with hydrogen, and were just ready to start when the valve-cords that hang down inside the bag from the valve at the top became twisted and drew up out of reach from the basket. In vain I tried to get them free by poking at them with sticks and long-handled things; the cords would not come down, and of course no sane man would make an ascension with his balloon-valve beyond control. There was nothing for it but to get inside that great gas-bag and undo the tangle with my hands. So I called fifteen or twenty men to catch hold of the netting and pull the struggling balloon down over me until I could reach the cords. Then I--"

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Were you standing inside the balloon so that you had to breathe hydrogen?"

The professor smiled. "I stood inside the balloon, but I breathed nothing; I held my breath, which is one of the things I have practised. Before I went inside I told my wife to note the time by her watch, and if I did not come out before one hundred and twenty seconds had passed to have the men drag me out. You see, I knew I could hold my breath one hundred and twenty seconds, but no longer.

"Well, we carried out the plan, and I freed the cords in less than my limit of time; then came the uncanny part of it--at least, it seemed so to me. I had read that hydrogen will not transmit sound, but had never tested it. It is true I had at various times taken hydrogen into my lungs, but never had I tried to speak in hydrogen. Now was my chance, and, with all my remaining breath I shouted as loud as I could inside that balloon. Think of it; there were my wife and the men a few feet distant, with only the thinnest tissue of silk between us, and a gas that was like nothing. Yet my cry, that would have reached perhaps half a mile in air, could not penetrate that little void. To those outside the balloon it was as if I had not opened my lips. They heard nothing, not even a whisper. I believe you might fire a cannon inside a bag of hydrogen, and no faintest rustle of the discharge would reach your ears. So, you see, a world of hydrogen would be a voiceless world."

"Did you say you have breathed hydrogen?" I asked.

"Yes; I have breathed it up to the danger-point. I know all the sensations. There is first a mild exhilaration, then a sense of sickening and head-throbbing, and finally a delicious languor that leads into stupor. When you get there it is time to stop. In making ascensions we have to be very careful not to breathe too much gas from the balloon-neck which hangs open over the basket. More than one aeronaut has been gradually overcome without realizing that he was in danger."

The professor went on to tell of other singular things about this subtle gas, notably that, speaking within limits, the higher you want a balloon to rise, the less hydrogen you must put in it. If you fill a balloon full of hydrogen it will rise to no great height (and is very apt to burst), since the gas has no space to expand in, and the way to keep a balloon rising is to make it expand more and more as it goes up, each foot of added volume displacing a foot of the air-ocean and to that extent adding buoyancy.

"General Hazen and I," said the professor, "once planned that some day, when we got an appropriation, we would go up in a balloon having a capacity of, say, forty thousand cubic feet, but carrying at the ground only ten thousand cubic feet of hydrogen--in other words, in a shrunken, quarter-filled balloon. Of course as we rose and the air became rarefied this hydrogen would expand against the decreasing air-pressure, and at a height of two miles our original ten thousand feet of gas might have swelled to twenty thousand feet, at five miles to thirty thousand feet, and so on. The last ten thousand feet of expansion would have brought us to no one knows what height, but certainly, we calculated, to the greatest height ever reached by a balloonist."

He explained that the balloon record of seven miles claimed for Glaischer and Coxwell, the English aeronauts, is not reliable, since the barometer used in that famous ascension (it was made at Wolverhampton, England, in 1862) could not register above five miles, and what was accomplished beyond that height is matter of pure conjecture and must be less than might be done by the Hazen-Myers plan, since Glaischer's balloon (by a serious oversight) was started on its flight nearly full of hydrogen, instead of nearly empty.

"Oh," exclaimed the professor, with regretful look, "why don't some of our very rich men think of these things!"

IV

THE STORY OF A BOY WHO RAN AWAY IN A BIG BALLOON

ONE of the professor's hobbies is that gas-balloons are better and safer than the hot-air kind, although the latter cost less to operate. Your hot-air balloon goes up with a rush, but comes down again as soon as it cools; and in the coming down lies the danger. A gas-balloon, on the other hand, stays up as long as you keep gas in it, and the professor's secret of varnishing holds gas like a trap.

As to the ordinary use of hot-air balloons for parachute dropping, the professor has only condemnation. A parachute, says he, is a sin and a disgrace--a thing to be prohibited by law. The parachute kills more people every year (the professor still is talking) than many a battle, and kills them in unpleasant ways: drops them on live electric wires, which shock them to death; drops them in lakes, where they are drowned, or in the ocean, where they are eaten by sharks; drops them in trees, where they catch by their coat-collars and choke to death; drops them on sharp railings, which spear them through; drops them--but the professor's list (backed by statistics, be it said) is too long and gruesome. It is only fair to add that I have a friend, Leo Stevens, a professional aeronaut, who has made thousands of drops from hot-air balloons and claims that nothing is safer than a parachute, and says he can steer one in its downward sailing so as to avoid dangerous landing-places, although he does admit numerous hair-breadth escapes, as when he dropped from a parachute two miles out at sea, this at Long Branch in 1898, and was only saved by his life-preserver and the courage of some fishermen, or again when De Ive, his partner in ballooning ventures, dropped with him on one occasion from a big balloon (one parachute was suspended on either side), and landed in Lake Canandaigua and was drowned. "Oh, there's no doubt a man takes chances on a parachute," said Stevens, "but I like it."

There is a singular thing about parachutes, Stevens contends, not sufficiently considered by Professor Myers in his experiments. The professor, with his usual thoroughness, has tested all shapes and kinds of parachutes by dropping them from a captive balloon with a sand-bag hitched on instead of a man. The dropping was done by a fuse which would burn the supporting rope and at a given moment set the parachute free, just as a man under the parachute would cut it free. And in a large number of cases the parachute did not open in time to save the sand-bag man from destruction on the ground.

"That proves," argues the professor, "that parachutes are extremely dangerous."

"Nothing of the sort," answers Leo Stevens; "it only proves that there is a big difference between a sand-bag man and a real man. The sand-bag is dead weight, and the man is live weight. A parachute will open for the one where it won't open for the other."

"Why will it," queries the professor, "if the man and the sand-bag weigh the same?"

"I don't know why, but it will," Stevens insists. "If what you say were true I'd be dead long ago, and my wife, and all my assistants."

I well remember my first visit to aeronaut Stevens at his little balloon establishment on Third Avenue, a rambling, go-as-you-please attic, with things strewn about anyhow, lengths of balloon-cloth hanging from rafters for the varnish to dry, crinkly yellow segments of balloons heaped near a sewing-machine that was stitching them into spheres, rows of hot-air balloons from past seasons ranged along on shelves in tight bundles, models of flying-machines, all kinds of parachutes, including one in red, white, and blue, made to take up a dog, and in various dusty corners photographs of Leo Stevens walking a tight rope, Leo Stevens rising to the clouds over waving multitudes, Leo Stevens (and his big umbrella) soaring down to earth from the height of twenty steeples, swinging with dancing-master grace from the bar of his trapeze. I liked this place for the good-natured faces of "Kid" Benjamin, who was scooping cold salmon out of a can when I came in, and a young lady with long eyelashes, who was running the machine.

Leo Stevens was out, said this young lady; he was seeing some patent lawyers about his new air-ship, but she was Mrs. Stevens, and could she do anything for me? I asked various questions, and she answered them from a wide practical knowledge. She had made dozens of balloons and parachutes--yes, and used them, too. It was "Kid" Benjamin who offered this latter information, remarking that she was "grand on a parachute."

Mrs. Stevens smiled, and explained that she had never made an ascension in her life until the previous summer, and then only because her husband was in a fix through the failure of another woman to appear. A balloon race had been advertised between two lady aeronauts, and when the time came one of them, Miss Nina Madison, was missing. Rather than have the thing a failure and a big crowd disappointed, Mrs. Stevens agreed to go up. She would take Miss Nina's place and race the professional. And she did it, and she won the race.

"You see," she said, "I didn't feel nervous as another woman might, because I'd been living with balloons for years. Besides they hitched me fast to the parachute ropes so I couldn't have fallen if I'd wanted to. It was lovely going up; everybody said we made a beautiful ascension, and the two balloons kept so close together that the other lady and I were talking all the way. At last, when we were up about three thousand feet, she called out that my balloon was settling and for me to cut. But I called back: 'Cut yourself,' and, sure enough, she did in a minute, and I watched her parachute open out and sink and get smaller and smaller, until she reached the ground. A few minutes later, when I saw my balloon had really settled, I cut, too. H-o-o-o, what a sensation! You know those awful dreams where you fall and fall? Well, it's just like that for two or three seconds, until your parachute fills wide and springs you up against the ropes. Then you sail down, down, with a lovely easy motion until you get close to the ground. But look out for the landing. Once I struck in a treetop. And you're liable to come down on houses or anything."

"You're liable to come down in the middle of a lake," put in "Kid" Benjamin.

"Do you go up?" said I to the "Kid," whose hands and face showed black smears from painting balloon-cloth. He was certainly not over eighteen.

"Do I?" he answered, with a grin. "I made more'n twenty ascensions and drops last summer."

"He's the one," said Mrs. Stevens, "who carried that boy up hanging from the parachute ropes. Don't you remember? At Coney Island? The boy was helping hold the balloon, and when she started his foot got caught."

"And he went up hanging by his foot?"

The "Kid" nodded. "Yep, stuck fast in the rigging by one shoe. As I sat on the trapeze bar there was that boy forty feet above me kicking and yelling. Say, you'd never guess what he was yelling about."

"I suppose he was afraid?"

The "Kid" shook his head. "No, sir; he didn't seem to mind the eight hundred feet we'd gone up, not a bit. What worried him was sixty cents in pennies and nickels that had spilled out of his pants pockets while he was upside down."

Then the "Kid" explained how he postponed his parachute drop on this occasion and got down safely, boy and all, by letting the balloon cool off and gradually settle to the ground.

"Isn't a parachute pretty long when it hangs down?" I asked.

"Certainly. It's thirty-five feet from where she hitches on t' the balloon to where you sit on the bar. That's length o' ropes and length o' cloth both."

"Then, how can you cut her loose from 'way down on the bar?"

"I'll tell you," put in Mrs. Stevens. "You just pull a tape that hangs down inside the parachute from a cutaway-block at the parachute head. The holding-rope passes through that block, and there's a knife-blade in the block over the rope. The tape pulls the knife-blade down, and away you go. It's one of my husband's inventions." She was plainly very proud of her husband.

Presently entered Leo Stevens himself, a surprisingly young man for such a veteran, scarcely over thirty, the explanation being that he began ballooning as a mere child. Before he was ten he had gained some mastery of slack-wire feats, and at thirteen he was known over the country as Prince Leo, a marvel of the air, in black and gold, making the fortune of some gentlemen who exploited him.

His arrival recalled the object of my visit, which was to get from him some practical ideas for balloon and parachute experiments on a small scale, the sort of thing boys might undertake in their own backyards; and, on learning this, Stevens caught my idea at once. He knew just what I wanted, and was glad to help me. He liked boys himself, and we settled down forthwith to a consideration of segments and materials and dimensions and, after a little planning and measuring, he had the problem solved.

"A hot-air balloon is the easiest and cheapest for boys to make," said Stevens, "and it goes up with more of a rush than a gas balloon. So we'll tell them how to make a hot-air balloon. I remember a boys' balloon picnic that I got up one summer at Chautauqua Lake while I was making ascensions there. What fun those boys did have! We sent up a kitten in a strawberry basket, strapped fast, you know, so she couldn't fall out, and the basket hung from the parachute by a time fuse that burned loose about a thousand feet up, and down came the whole thing, parachute, kitten, and all, sailing beautifully and landing as easily as you please. It never hurt the kitten at all. But the balloon drifted nearly a mile away across a swamp and stuck in a big tree. What a time those boys had chasing it and climbing after it and slopping home with it after dark through the swamp, with lanterns and torches! I suppose they got well spanked, a good many of them, but boys don't mind."

"How big was this balloon?"

"About eleven feet high, inflated; that's a good size. I mean eleven feet high inflated, but the segments must be cut out eighteen feet long to allow for the curve. See," and he made a sketch of a single segment. "There must be fourteen segments like this, each one eighteen feet long and two feet wide at the widest part, then tapering to a point at one end, the top, and to a width of five inches at the other end, the mouth, which must be left open. These segments are made from ordinary sheets of tissue paper, first pasted into long sheets (use ordinary starch paste) and then cut out after the pattern. Then the fourteen segments must be pasted together lengthwise along the edges, and they will form a balloon with enough lifting power to take up a parachute and small passenger, say a kitten or a puppy."

"We must tell them how to fill this balloon with hot air," I suggested.

"That's so," said Stevens. "Well, it's very simple. They must dig a trench, in the yard or somewhere, five feet long and one foot deep, with a hole dug at one end for a fire. Then they must cover over the trench with pieces of tin and spread dirt over that, and boards over all; this is for a good draught. Then they must make a fire in the hole at one end of the trench out of barrel-staves or anything that will give a hot flame, and toward the last they might throw on a little kerosene. That's exactly the way we make our fires for big ascensions.

"At the other end of the trench they must fix a length of stove-pipe sticking straight up out of the draught-hole into the mouth of the balloon and four or five boys must stand around on fences and boxes to hold the side of the balloon away from the fire which will shoot high above the chimney. Many a big hot-air balloon has been burned up that way on a windy day, and in our ascensions we have dozens of ropes sewn all over the balloon sides; we call them wind guys, so that men can pull the cloth away from the fire while it's filling. Say, talking about boys getting spanked, I must tell you a story."

The story was from his own boyish experience--how he made his first trip to the clouds at the age of twelve, and set a whole city talking. This was the city of Cleveland, Ohio, where on a certain Sunday afternoon there was to be a balloon ascension at the great pleasure park. Young Stevens, of course, was present, wild with excitement, for balloons had been in his thoughts and dreams ever since he could remember. He pressed forward through the crowd and, with bulging eyes, watched the aeronaut arrange his barrels and pipes for the hydrogen-making, danced with delight as the great bag swelled and struggled, and finally was bitter in disappointment when the police appeared suddenly with orders to prevent the ascension, because the day was Sunday.

Then, while the balloonist was protesting and pleading, Stevens formed his plan. He would go up himself instead of the man. There was the balloon all ready, held by a single rope. There was the basket swinging impatiently, empty, and he more impatient than the basket. Quickly he turned to a boy who was with him. "Say, I'll tell you what. You get a knife and cut that rope, and I'll go up." But the boy demurred. Anyhow, he had no knife. So away dashed Stevens, and returned in a jiffy with a knife, taken from his father's shop. It was a sharp one.

"There," panted the boy. "Now, cut her quick, soon as I climb in."

The people about were so occupied with the parley growing warm between balloonist and police that few paid attention when a little shaver in knickerbockers crept close to the basket and then slipped over its side. But the next minute nine thousand people paid considerable attention and shouted their surprise and delight as the eager balloon suddenly shot skyward, a small white face peering down and trying not to look frightened. The knife had done its work, and the subject of dispute, abruptly removed, was presently soaring half a mile above the city, drifting with the wind.

Meantime little Leo, curled up at the bottom of the car, was saying over to himself a story he had read of two little babies who went up once in a balloon and sailed far, far away and never came back, but they might have come back if only they had been strong enough to pull a string that hung over them. Hello! So there was a string to pull! Well, any boy could pull a string. He wasn't a baby. But where was the old string? He must look about and find it. And sure enough he did find it, only it turned out to be a stout rope, and he tugged at it valiantly until the valve opened and the balloon began to descend, just as the story-book said it would. And so occupied was Leo with keeping this valve open that he never once looked at the wide view spread beneath him, nor knew where he was until he came bumping into a treetop, and found himself upset among the branches, which first tore his clothes to tatters and then dropped him into a muddy canal, whence he emerged a sadly battered and bedraggled aeronaut, yet happy. And even when his mother chastised him that evening with a ram-rod (his father being a gun-maker) he remained serene, for had he not gone up in a balloon, and was not the whole of Cleveland admiring him, and would he not go up again (he knew he would, despite all promises made under ram-rod stress) as soon as the chance presented?

And within a year the chance did present, a bait of fifty dollars per ascension being offered the lad, and the outcome was he ran away from home, and saw no more of his family until years had passed and he had grown accustomed to dangers of the air and diamonds of value in his apparel.

"Isn't it queer," said Stevens, talking it over, "how a fellow will stay away from his people when everything is all right, and get back to them through trouble? After I started in to be a balloonist I never saw my mother for seven years. Then I came once more to Cleveland to give an exhibition at the very park where I first went up--they call it Forest City Park. I was to perform on a slack wire nine hundred feet long, stretched between two towers one hundred and fifty feet high. My wire wasn't long enough to reach all the way, so they spliced on a length of three hundred feet more, and before I began my feats I walked back and forth over the wire to test it. I always do that. Then I walked to the middle of the wire and pretended to slip and fall--that's a regular trick to startle the crowd. You let yourself drop suddenly, catch on the wire, and spring up again. Well, this time when I let myself drop I didn't spring up again, and I didn't know anything more for nineteen days, when I came to myself in the Huron Street Hospital. Somehow that splice in the wire had broken, and I went straight to the ground, breaking one arm, both wrists, and cracking my spinal column in four places. It's a wonder I lived at all, they say, and during that hard time my mother came to me, as mothers do. Oh, she doesn't love the balloon business, I can tell you. But I love it. I've made over a thousand ascensions, and never been badly hurt but once."

We were far away now from our balloon-making, and I reminded Stevens that we had still to tell the boys how to make a parachute.

"All right," said he; "here you are," and he gave me the following directions: "The parachute is made of fourteen segments of tissue paper, each one like this, measuring thirty-six inches long, six inches wide at the base, and tapering like the pattern up to a point. These segments must be pasted together lengthwise, the fourteen points joining at the top of the parachute, and in each one of the fourteen side-seams a length of eighty inches of No. 8 thread must be pasted, leaving two inches sticking out at the top and about four feet hanging down below. The short ends at the top must be tied together, and these made fast to a piece of iron hoop pasted in the mouth of the balloon. Here the fuse must be placed and lighted just as the balloon is ready to start. A five-minute fuse will be long enough, and it must be so placed that when it has burned its time the parachute will fall from the balloon. The long ends below must be tied to a curtain ring, from which the little basket hangs, with the kitten securely fastened in it by a piece of cloth pierced with four holes for the four legs. This can be brought up over the kitten's back and tied to the sides of the basket. In this way the kitten is in neither danger nor discomfort. The boys must be careful to make this plain to mothers and sisters, or their experiments may be stopped by family orders. I'll guarantee one thing, though, if they carry out these instructions carefully, your boy friends will have a fine time."

I certainly hope they will. _

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