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Their despatch became frequent, sometimes two in the same twenty-four hours. In less than a single week in October as many as four balloons had fallen in Belgium, and as many more elsewhere. Up till now some sixteen ventures had ended well, but presently there came trouble.
In all kinds of weather this determined sky navigator went aloft; in wind, rain, and sunshine he studied the atmospheric conditions, air currents, and the action of his balloon. The young Brazilian ascended thirty times in spherical balloons before he attempted any work on an elongated shape.
Air Weather Service had been asked to screen the reports and check those that sounded like balloons against their records of balloon flights. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, distinguished astrophysicist and head of Ohio State University's Astronomy Department, had been given a contract to sort out those reports that could be blamed on stars, planets, meteors, etc.
Continuous relays of tea were coming and going. Colonel , who had been in an observation balloon most of the day, spoke of balloon sickness. "I have been in balloons of one sort and another for twenty years," he said. "I never overcome the nausea. Very few airmen do." I spoke to him about a recent night attack by German aviators.
Search lights and incandescent lights are advantageously used with balloons. In submarine boats electricity will one day be very useful. Submarine diving will play a part in future wars, and the diver's lamp will be electrical. Progress has been made also in constructing "electrical guns," in which the cartridge contains a fuse which is ignited by pressing an electric button on the gun.
The bold Britons started again in their Derby turn-out yesterday. Nothing has been heard of them since. We do not know whether they have been imprisoned or what has become of them. I have already entrusted my letters to balloons, boatmen, peasants, and Americans, but I do not know whether they have reached you or not. The last balloon was pursued by a Prussian one, the newspapers say!
Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown hands; stirred. Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate present; noted her George filling his pipe.
The philanthropy, therefore, takes a more flatulent and innocent form, and expends its strength in mounting paper balloons, out of which Jack pitches himself, with all the fellow-creatures he can coax into sailing with him.
And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of understanding.
On October 11, two balloons, respectively called "George Sand" and the "Armand Barbès," left the capital. "My name," she remarks, "did not bring good luck to the first which suffered injuries and descended with difficulty, yet rescued the Americans who had gone up in it." The "Barbès" had a smoother but a more famous flight; alighting and depositing M. Gambetta safely at Tours.
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