A PERILOUS BALLOON VOYAGE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume I, Issue 28, 22 August 1868, Page 5

A PERILOUS BALLOON VOYAGE.

(From " Once a Week.")

One dull day in autumn, just after noon, a balloon tobo into the air at the foot of Cleet Hills, on the western edge of the great central plain of England. It was inflated with the lightest of gases which chemical skill could produce ; it rose with amazing velocity. A mile up, and it entered a stratum of cloud more than a thousand feet thick. Emerging from this, the sun shone brightly on the air-ship ; the sky overhead was of the clearest and deepest blue ; and below lay clotHland — an immeasureable expanse of cloud, whose surface looked as solid as that of the earth, now whplly lost to view. Lofty mountains and deep dark ravin es appeared below ; the peaks and sides of those cloud-mountains next the sun glittering like snow, but casting shadows as black as if they were solid rock. Uprose the balloon with tremendous velocity. Four miles above earth ! A pigeon was let loGse ; it dropped down through the. air as if it had been a stone. The air was too thin to enable it to fly. It was as if a bark laden to the deck were to pass from the heavy waters of the open sea into an inland unsaline lake : the bark would sink at once in the thinner water. Up, up, still higher ! The spectrum, when -opposed to the sun, showed marvellously clear ; lines appeared which are invisible in the denser atmosphere on the earth's surface ; but as the car swung round in its gyrating upward flight, the moment the direct rays of the sun passed off the prism, there was no Bpectrum at all. The air was so pure, so free from the comparatively solid aqueous matter, that there was no reflected light : the air was too thin to retain or reflect any portion of the rays which fell upon it. And what a silence profound ! The heights of the sky were as still as the deepest depths of ocean, where, as was found during the search for the lost Atlaniic cable, the fine mud lies as unstirred from year to year as the dust which imperceptibly gathers on the furniture of a deserted house. No sound, no life — only the bright sunshine falling through a sky which it could not warm. Up — five' miles above earth !—! — higher than the inaccessible summit of Chimborazo or Dewangiri. Despite the sunshine, everything freezes. The air grows too thin to support life, even for a few minutes. Two men only are in that adventurous balloon— the one steering the air-ship, the other watching the scientific instruments, and recording them with a rapidity bred of long practice. Suddenly, as the latter looks at his instruments, his sight grows dim ; he takes a lens to help his sight, and can only mark, from the falling barometer, that they are still rising rapily. A flask of brandy lies within a foot of him : he tries to reach it, but his arms refuse to obey his will. He tries to call to his comrade, who has gone into the ring above ; a whisper in chat' deep stillness would suffice, — but no sound comes from his lips — he is voiceless. His head droops on his shoulder ; with an effort he raises it — it faljs on the other shoulder ; once- more, with a resolute effort, he raises it — it falls backward, for a moment he sees dimly the figure of his comrade in the ring above ; then sensation fails him, — he lies back unconscious. Some minutes pass — the balloon still rising upwards. Seven miles above earth ! The steersman comes down into the car ; he sees his comrade in a swoon, and feels his own senses failing him. He saw at once that life or death hung upon a few moments. The balloon was still rising rapidly ; it must be made to descend at once, or they .were bot.h dead men. He seized, or triecTto seize, the valve in order to open it and let out a portion of the inflating gas. His hands are purple with the intense cold ; they are paralysed, they will not respond to his will. It was a fearful moment. In another minute, in their upward flight, he would be senseless as his comrade. But he was a bold, aelf -possessed man, trained in a hundred balloon ascents, and ready for every emergency. He seized the valve with his teeah ; it opened a little— once, twice, thrice. The balloon began to descend. Then the swooned marksman heard a voice calling to him, " Come, take an observation, try ! " He heard as in a dream, but could neither sea nor move. Again he "heard, in firmer and commanding tones, " Take an observation ; now, then, do try. He returned to consciousness, and saw the steersman standing before him. He looked at his instruments ; they must have been nearly eight miles up : but now the barometer was rising rapidly, and the balloon was descending. Brandy was used. The aeronauts revived. They had been higher above earth than mortal man, or any living thing, had ever been before. But now they were safe. Such are the perils which science demands of her votaries, and which they encounter bravely and cheerfully. Such was the memorable balloon ascent of Messrs. Coxwell and Glaisher, from Wolverhampton, on the 7th September, 1862. A madness, thousands will say, a perilous absurdity, a tempting of Providence, a risking of life for no adequate purpose. One minute more of inaction — of compulsory inaction — on the part of the steersman, whose senses were failing him, and the air-ship, with its intensely rarefied gas, would have been floating untended, with two corpses, in the wide realms of space. What would have become of it 1 How far it would have ascended with its lifeless freight, how long it would have floated all unseen* ( in the empyrean, who «hall say?