The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Part 10

In this prodigious leap there was naught of the disagreeable sensation one experiences in a rapidly rising elevator. Instead it rather seemed that we were standing motionless, stationary in s.p.a.ce, and that the earth itself had gotten loose and was dropping away beneath us to depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon, with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine, and hempen ropes and willow wands (the latter forming the basket), has always, while floating in mid-air free of the drag rope's tricks, the rigid h.o.m.ogeneity of a rock, a solidity that quickly inspires the most timid with perfect confidence in her security.

Ballast was thrown out by Donaldson,--a little. At Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street our alt.i.tude was 2,000 feet. The great city lay beneath us like an unrolled scroll. White and dusty, the streets looked like innumerable strips of Morse telegraph paper--the people the dots, the vehicles the dashes. Central Park, with its winding waters, was transformed into a superb mantle of dark green velvet splashed with silver, worthy of a royal _fete_. Behind us lay the sea, a vast field of glittering silver. Before us lay a wide expanse of Jersey's hills and dales that from our height appeared a plain, with many a reddish-gray splash upon its verdant stretches that indicated a village or a town.

Above and about us lay an immeasurable s.p.a.ce of which we were the only tenants, and over which we began to feel a grand sense of dominion that wrapped us as in royal ermine: if we were not lords of this aerial manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay--home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith and gaze at the sun?

Indeed our sense of confidence became such that, while sitting on the edge of the basket to reach and pa.s.s Donaldson a rope he asked for, I leaned so far over that the bottle of brandy resting in my hip pocket slipped out and fell into the Hudson.

Oddly, Ford, who was the most experienced balloonist of the party after Donaldson himself, seemed most nervous and timid, but it was naught but an expression of that const.i.tutional trouble (dizziness) so many have when looking down from even the minor height of a step-ladder. In all the long hours he was with us, I do not recall his once standing erect in the basket, and when others of us perched upon the basket's edge, he would beg us to come down. But mind, there was no lack of stark courage in Alfred Ford, sufficiently proved by the fact that he never missed a chance for an ascent.

But safe? Confident? Why, before we were up ten minutes, Lyons and MacKeever were sitting on the edge of the basket, with one hand holding to a stay, tossing out handfuls of small tissue paper circulars bearing "News from the Clouds." Many-colored, these little circulars as they fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant b.u.t.ter-flies, and we kept on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were wasting so much weight we should soon be out of easy view of the earth!

Indeed, the balance of the balloon is so extremely fine that when a single handful of these little tissue circulars was thrown out, increased ascent was shown on the dial of our aneroid barometer!

At 4.30 p.m. we had drifted out over the Hudson at an alt.i.tude of 2,500 feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he hoped to be able to sail the _Barnum_ at least three or four days.

"But," he added, "I shall certainly be unable, to carry all of you for so long a journey, and shall be compelled to drop you one by one. So you had best draw lots to settle whom I shall drop first, and in what order the rest shall follow."

Sailing then 2,500 feet above the earth, Lyons voiced a thought racing from my own brain for utterance when he blurted out: "What the deuce do you mean by 'drop' us?" Indeed, the question must have been on three other tongues as well, for Donaldson's reply, "Oh, descend to the earth and let you step out then," was greeted by all five of us with a salvo of deep, l.u.s.ty sighs of relief.

Then we drew lots for the order of our going, MacKeever drawing first, Austin second, Lyons third, Ford fourth, and I fifth.

Meantime, beneath us on the river vessels which from our height looked like the toy craft on the lake in Central Park were whistling a shrill salute that, toned down by the distance, was really not unmusical.

Having crossed the Hudson and swept above Weehawken, we found ourselves cruising northwest over the marshes of the Hackensack.

As the heat of the declining sun lessened, our cooling gas contracted and the balloon sank steadily until at 5.10 we were 250 feet above the earth and 100 feet of our great drag rope was trailing on the ground.

Within hailing distance of people beneath us, a curious condition was observed. We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not make them understand a word; our voices had to fill a sphere of air; theirs, with the earth beneath them, only a hemisphere. Thus the modern megaphone is especially useful to aeronauts.

Hereabouts our fun began. Many countrymen thought the balloon running away with us and tried to stop and save us--always by grasping the drag rope, bracing themselves, and trying literally to hold us; when the slack of the rope straightened, they performed somersaults such as our pilot vowed no acrobat could equal. And yet the balance of the balloon is so fine that even a child of ten can pull one down, if only it has strength enough to withstand occasional momentary lifts off the ground.

Occasionally one more clever would run and take a quick turn of the rope about a gate or fence--and then spend the rest of the evening gathering the scattered fragments and repairing the damage.

And when there was not fun enough below, Donaldson himself would take a hand and put his steed through some of her fancy paces--as when, approaching a large lake, he told us to hold tightly to the stays, let out gas and dropped us, bang! upon the lake. Running at a speed of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, we hit the water with a tremendous shock, bounded thirty or forty feet into the air, descended again and literally skipped in great leaps along the surface of the water, precisely like a well-thrown "skipping stone." Then out went ballast and up and on we went, no worse for the fun beyond a pretty thorough wetting!

At 6.20 p.m. we landed on the farm of Garrett Harper in Bergen County, twenty-six miles from New York. After drinking our fill of milk at the farmhouse, we rose again and drifted north over Ramapo until, at 7.30, a dead calm came upon us and we made another descent. We then found that we had landed near Bladentown on the farm of Miss Charlotte Thompson, a charming actress of the day whose "Jane Eyre" and "Fanchon"

are still pleasant memories to old theatre-goers. Loading our balloon with stones to anchor it, our party paid her a visit and were cordially received. An invitation to join us hazarded by Donaldson, Miss Thompson accepted with delight. I do not know if she is still living, but it she is, she cannot have forgotten her half-hour's cruise in the good airs.h.i.+p _Barnum_, wafted silently by a gentle evening breeze, the lovely panorama beneath her half hid, half seen through the purple haze of twilight.

After landing Miss Thompson at 8.18 we ascended for the night, for a night's bivouac among the stars. The moon rose early. We were soon sailing over the Highlands of the Hudson. Off in the east we could see the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing through meadows, roaring over fences, cras.h.i.+ng through tree-tops. And all night long we were continually ascending and descending, sinking into valleys and rising over hills, following closely the contours of the local topography.

During the more equable temperature of night the balloon's height is governed by the drag rope. Leaving a range of hills and floating out over a valley, the weight of the drag pulls the balloon down until the same length of rope is trailing through the valley that had been dragging on the hill. This habit of the balloon produces startling effects. Drifting swiftly toward a rocky precipitous hillside against which it seems inevitable you must dash to your death, suddenly the trailing drag rope reaches the lower slopes and you soar like a bird over the hill, often so low that the bottom of the basket swishes through the tree-tops.

But, while useful in conserving the balloon's energy, the drag rope is a source of constant peril to aeronauts, of terror to people on the earth, and of damage to property. It has a nasty clinging habit, winding round trees or other objects, that may at any moment upset basket and aeronauts. On this trip our drag rope tore sections out of scores of fences, upset many haystacks, injured horses and cattle that tried to run across it, whipped off many a chimney, broke telegraph wires, and seemed to take malicious delight in working some havoc with everything it touched.

At ten o'clock we sighted Cozzen's Hotel, and shortly drifted across the parade ground of West Point, its huge battlemented gray walls making one fancy he was looking down into the inner court of some great mediaeval castle. Then we drifted out over the Hudson toward Cold Spring until, caught by a different current, we were swept along the course of the river.

As we sailed over mid-stream and two hundred feet above it, with the tall cliffs and mysterious, dark recesses of the Highlands on either hand, the waters turned to a livid gray under the feeble light of the waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome shadows as no fancy could people with aught but gaunt goblins and dread demons, come down to us through generations untold, an unspent legacy of terror, from half-savage, superst.i.tious ancestors.

Suddenly Ford spoke in a low voice: "Boys, I was in nine or ten battles of the Civil War, from Gaines's Mill to Gettysburg, but in none of them was there a scene which impressed me as so terrible as this, no situation that seemed to me so threatening of irresistible perils."

Nearing Fishkill at eleven, a land breeze caught and whisked us off eastward. At midnight we struck the town of Wappinger's Falls--and struck it hard. Our visitation is doubtless remembered there yet. The town was in darkness and asleep. We were running low before a stiff breeze, half our drag rope on the ground. The rope began to roar across roofs and upset chimneys with shrieks and crashes that set the folk within believing the end of the world had come. Instantly the streets were filled with flying white figures and the air with men's curses and women's screams. Three shots were fired beneath us. Two of our fellows said they heard the whistle of the b.a.l.l.s, so Donaldson thought it prudent to throw out ballast and rise out of range.

Here the moon left us and we sailed on throughout the remainder of the night in utter darkness and without any extraordinary incident, all but the watch lying idly in the bottom of the basket viewing the stars and wondering what new mischief the drag rope might be planning.

The only duty of the watch was to lighten s.h.i.+p upon too near descent to the earth, and for this purpose a handful of Hippodrome circulars usually proved sufficient. Indeed, only eight pounds of ballast were used from the time we left Miss Thompson till dawn, barring a half-sack spent in getting out of range of the Wappinger's Falls sportsmen, who seemed to want to bag us.

Ford and Austin were a.s.signed as the lookout from 12.00 to 2.00, Lyons and myself from 2.00 to 3.00, and Donaldson and MacKeever from 3.00 to 4.00.

From midnight till 3.00 a.m. Donaldson slept as peaceful as a baby, curled up in the basket with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us slept little through the night and talked less, each absorbed in the reflections and speculations inspired by our novel experience.

At the approach of dawn we had the most unique and extraordinary experience ever given to man. The balloon was sailing low in a deep valley. To the east of us the Berks.h.i.+res rose steeply to summits probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under the mists of early morning and the shadows of the hills. No flush of dawn yet lit the sky. Donaldson had been consulting his watch, suddenly he rose and called, pointing eastward across the range:

"Watch, boys! Look there!"

He then quickly dumped overboard half the contents of a ballast bag.

Flying upward like an arrow, the balloon soon shot up above the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a distant Berks.h.i.+re hill, as if startled by our temerity.

Shortly thereafter, when we had descended to our usual level and were running swiftly before a stiff breeze over a rocky hillside, Donaldson yelled:

"Hang on, boys, for your lives!"

The end of the drag rope had gotten a hitch about a large tree limb.

Luckily Donaldson had seen it in time to warn us, else we had there finished our careers. We had barely time to seize the stays when the rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down, spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and myself hanging in s.p.a.ce by our hands, and the other four on the lower side of the basket, scrambling to save themselves. Instantly, of course, the basket righted and dropped back beneath us.

And then began a terrible struggle.

The pressure of the wind bore us down within a hundred feet of the ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out.

The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood empty, and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry.

It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death.

But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.

Happily the struggle was brief. The limb that held us snapped, and the balloon sprang forward in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-lash. But we were free, safe, and our stout vessel soon settled down to the velocity of the wind.

By this time we all were beginning to feel hungry, for we had supped the night before in mid-air from a lunch basket that held more delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and began looking for a likely place. At last he chose a little village, which upon near approach we learned lay in Columbia County of our own good State.

We called to two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a section or two of the fence fly into the air as if in pursuit of us.

Presently the heat of the rising sun expanded our gas and sent us up again 2,000 feet, making breakfast farther off than ever. Thus, it being clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas, Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely landed on mother earth, but not until after we had received a pretty severe pounding about, for such a high wind blew that the anchor was slow in holding.

This landing was made at 5.24 a.m. on the farm of John W. c.o.o.ns near the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson City, and about one hundred and thirty miles from New York.

Here our pilot decided our vessel must be lightened of two men, and thus the lot drawn the night before compelled us to part, regretfully, with MacKeever of the _Herald_, and Austin of the _World_. Ford, however, owing allegiance to an afternoon paper, the _Graphic_, and always bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw an opportunity to win satisfaction greater even than that of keeping on with us. So he, too, left us here, with the result that the _Graphic_ published a full story of the voyage up to this point, Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the twenty-fifth, the _Herald_ and the _World_ trailed along for second place in their Sunday editions, while _Sun_ and _Tribune_ readers had to wait till Monday morning for such "News from the Clouds"

as Lyons and I had to give them, for wires were not used as freely then as now.

Our departing mates brought us a rare good breakfast from Mr. c.o.o.ns'

generous kitchen--a fourteen-quart tin pail well-nigh filled with good things, among them two currant pies on yellow earthen plates, gigantic in size, pale of crust, though anything but anaemic of contents. Lyons finished nearly the half of one before our reascent, to his sorrow, for scarcely were we off the earth before he developed a colic that seemed to interest him more, right up to the finish of the trip, than the scenery.

Bidding our mates good-bye, we prepared to reascend. Many farmers had been about us holding to our ropes and leaning on the basket, and later we realized we had not taken in sufficient ballast to offset the weight of the three men who had left us.

Released, the balloon sprang upward at a pace that all but took our breath away. Instantly the earth disappeared beneath us. We saw Donaldson pull the safety valve wide open, draw his sheath knife ready to cut the drag rope, standing rigid, with his eyes riveted upon the aneroid barometer. The hand of the barometer was sweeping across the dial at a terrific rate. I glanced at Donaldson and saw him smile.