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On this the crowd grew impatient, and Duruof, determining to keep faith with them, succeeded by an artifice in regaining his car, which he hastily carried back to the balloon, and immediately taking his seat, and accompanied by his wife, the intrepid pair commenced their bold flight just as the shades of evening were settling down.
Here was congregated a vast crowd, which increased in density as four o'clock rang out, and the great mass of brown silk into which the gas was being assiduously pumped began to assume a pear-like shape, and sway to and fro in the light air of the autumn afternoon. About this time the heroes of the hour, Monsieur and Madame Duruof walked into the enclosure, accompanied by Mr. Coxwell and Mr.
In a stormy and hazardous descent Tissandier, under the guidance of M. Duruof, landed with difficulty on the sea coast of France, when one of the first to render help was a lightkeeper of the Griz-nez lighthouse, who gave the information that on the other side of the hills, a few hundred yards from the spot where they had landed, was the tomb of Pilatre de Rozier, whose tragical death has been recorded in an early chapter.
A few weeks earlier two French aeronauts, a Monsieur and Madame Duruof, making an ascent from Calais, had been carried out to sea, and dropping into the Channel, had passed through enough perils to make them a nine days' wonder.
A fitting sequel to the story comes from Paris, where the heroic couple, after a sojourn in England, were given a splendid reception and a purse of money, with which M. Duruof forthwith constructed a new balloon, named the "Ville de Calais." On the 4th of March, 1882, the ardent amateur balloonist, Mr. Simmons, had a narrow escape in circumstances somewhat similar to the above.
Coxwell's assistant, seated on the ring above the car, began to take in light cargo in the shape of aneroids, barometers, bottles of brandy and water, and other useful articles. M. Duruof scrambled into the car, one of the men who had been weighing it down getting out to make room for him.
It descended again, Madame Duruof got out, and in her place came tumbling in a splendid fellow, some six feet four high, broad-chested to boot, who instantly made supererogatory the presence of half a dozen of the bags of ballast that lay in the bottom of the car.
M. Wilfrid de Fonvielle, a French aeronaut and journalist, took off his hat, and in full gaze of a sympathising and deeply interested crowd deliberately attired himself in a Glengarry cap, a thick overcoat, and a muffler. M Duruof put on his overcoat, and Mr. Barker, Mr.
M. Duruof, already introduced in these pages, trusting himself to the old craft, "Le Neptune," in unskyworthy condition, made a fast plunge into space, and, catching the upper winds, was borne away for as long a period as could be maintained at the cost of a prodigal expenditure of ballast.
Glaisher. A little work was being extensively sold in the Palace bearing on the title-page, over the name "M. Duruof," a murderous-looking face, the letter-press purporting to be a record of the life and adventures of the French aeronauts. Happily M. Duruof bore but the slightest resemblance to this portrait, being a young man of pleasing appearance, with a good, firm, frank-looking face.
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