A DUEL IN THE AIR.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1113, 16 November 1883, Page 3

A DUEL IN THE AIR.

Few balloon voyages can compare, for exciting and perilous incidents, with one which was performed at the time of the siege of Paris by the well-known M. Nadar. That gentleman left Tours for Paris with Government dispatches, at six in the morning. At eleven he was within view Of the capital, and, while floating about three thousand metres above Fort Chprenfon, a second balloon was observed on the horizon. M. Nadar at once displayed the French flag, and the other 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 separated by only a short distance, several explosions were heard.. The strange teronaut con’inued to flre shots at M. Nadar’s balloon, the “ Inlrepide,” 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 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, oh the first shot from the enemy, apparently to slop p hole niade in the tissue ; and 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 Intrepide into the Prussian balloon, which suddenly sank 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 rode off to the Prussian outposts. M. Nadar then descended in safety at Charenfont—■ Cassell's Illustrated History of the FrancoQerman War.