“And the balloon rises again?”
“No!”
“I hear the splashing waves!”
“The sea is under us!”
“It is not five hundred feet off!”
“God help us!”
Such were the words which rang through the air above the vast wilderness of the Pacific[2], at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d of March, 1865.
It was a hurricane lasting without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Covering a space of 1,800 miles, it occasioned immense destruction in America, Europe and Asia. Cities in ruins, forests uprooted, hundreds of shipwrecks, thousands of persons crushed to the earth or engulfed in the sea; such were the witnesses to its fury.
And while these catastrophes were taking place upon the land and the sea, something was enacting in the heavens.
A balloon, caught in the whirl of a column of air, spinning around as in some aerial whirlpool, rushed through space with a velocity of ninety miles an hour. Below the balloon swung a basket containing five persons.
The storm had been raging five days. The balloon had come from a great distance, the passengers, indeed, had been unable to determine the course, they could not calculate their position. Their vision could not penetrate anything, as the thick fog was under the balloon. Around them everything was obscure. The clouds were so dense that they could not tell the day from the night[3]. No reflection of light, no sound, no roaring of the ocean had penetrated that profound obscurity.
Meanwhile the balloon had risen to a height of 4,500 feet, and the passengers discovered that the sea was beneath them, and realizing that the dangers above were less formidable than those below.
The night passed in the midst of dangers. At dawn, the clouds rose high into the heavens; and, in a few hours more, the whirlwind had spent its force[4]. Now, however, it became evident that the balloon was again sinking, slowly but surely. The voyagers threw overboard the remaining articles which weighed down the balloon, the few provisions they had kept, and everything they had in their pockets. But it was evident that the gas was escaping, and that the voyagers could no longer keep the balloon afloat.
They were lost!
There was no land, not even an island, beneath them. It was a vast sea on which the waves were surging with incomparable violence. It was the limitless ocean. Not a ship was in sight.
In order to save themselves it was necessary for them to stop the downward movement. But in spite of all they could do the balloon continued to descend.
It was a terrible situation, this, of these unfortunate men. The gas continued to escape. Faster and faster they fell, until at 1 o’clock they were not more than 600 feet above the sea. The gas poured out of a rent in the silk. Unless some land was to appear before nightfall, voyagers, balloon, and basket would disappear beneath the waves.
It was evident that these men were strong and able to face death. Not a murmur escaped their lips. They were determined to struggle to the last second. The basket, constructed of willow osiers, could not float, and they had no means of supporting it on the surface of the water. It was 2 o’clock, and the balloon was only 400 feet above the waves.
Then a voice was heard, the voice of a man whose heart knew no fear.
“Is everything thrown out?”
“No, we yet have 10,000 francs in gold.”
A heavy bag fell into the sea.
“Is the balloon rising?”
“A little, but it will soon fall again.”
“Is there nothing else we can get rid of?”
“Not a thing.”
“Yes there is; there is the basket! Catch hold of the net[5], and let it go.”
This was, indeed, the last means of lightening the apparatus. The five passengers had clambered into the net around the hoop, and looked into the abyss below.
The balloon went up. But soon it began to descend again. It was impossible to repair the rent, through which the gas was rushing out.
At 4 o’clock, when the balloon was only 500 feet above the sea, the loud barking of a dog was heard.
“Top[6] has seen something! Land! Land!”
They saw a high land. But it was still far, and it would take an hour to reach it. An hour! They did not know whether it was an island or a continent, as they were uninformed as to what part of the world the tempest had hurried them. But they knew that this land must be reached.
At 4 o’clock it was plain that the balloon could not sustain itself much longer. It grazed the surface of the sea.
A half hour later the land was scarcely a mile distant. The balloon made a bound into the air. It rose 1,500 feet, then began to descend and soon fell upon the sand. The passengers, assisting each other, hastened to the ground.
The basket had contained five passengers and a dog, but only four had been thrown upon the shore. The fifth one, then, had been washed off by the great wave. His friends cried:
“Perhaps he is trying to swim ashore. Save him! Let us save him!”
Chapter II
They were neither professional aeronauts nor amateurs in aerial navigation[7] whom the storm had thrown upon this coast. They were prisoners of war and succeeded to escape. Their aerial voyage had lasted five days. How did it happen?
This same year, in the month of February, 1865, many officers were captured by the enemy and confined within the city. One of the most famous of them was a Federal staff officer named Cyrus Smith[8].
Cyrus Smith was a native of Massachusetts[9], an engineer by profession, and a scientist, to whom the Government had given, during the war, the direction of the railways.
He was thin, bony, lean, about forty-five years old, with heavy moustache[10]. His muscles showed remarkable firmness. He was as much a man of action as of study. He was highly educated, practical, clear-headed, and his temperament was superb. Cyrus Smith was also the personification of courage. He had been in every battle of the war.
At the same time with Cyrus Smith another important personage fell into the power of the Southerners[11]. This was no other than the honorable Gideon Spilett[12], reporter to the New York Herald[13]. He obtained exact information and transmitted it to the journal in the quickest manner, and belonged in the first rank of the reporters.
A man of great merit; energetic, prompt, and ready; full of ideas; soldier and artist; vehement in council; resolute in action; thinking nothing of pain, fatigue, or danger when seeking information; a master of recondite information of the unpublished, the unknown, the impossible. He was one of those to whom all perils are welcome.
He also had been in all the battles, in the front rank, revolver in one hand and notebook in the other, his pencil never trembling in the midst of a cannonade. Gideon Spilett was tall, forty years old or more. Sandy-colored whiskers encircled his face. His eye was clear, lively, and quick moving.
Cyrus Smith and Gideon Spilett knew each other only by reputation[14], but the two soon learned to appreciate each other.
Cyrus