TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that reached down from hatch to cabin on theDunderberg, and remarked, while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit when I got down into her—in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very long without air from the pump."
"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.
"That's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or whatever they make bleaching-powder of—barrels and barrels of it, with the heads broke in after a storm, and it wasn't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you. First they set men shoveling it out, with sponges in their mouths, against the dust and gases, but one man coughed so hard he tore something in his lungs or head and died. Then they sent for a diver—that was me—and I worked hours down there hoisting and shoveling, like I was at the bottom of the bay, only there was no water to carry the weight. Say, but wasn't that suit heavy, and when I looked out through my helmet-glasses it seemed as if I was digging througha snow-field, with such a terrible dazzle it made my eyes ache to look at it."
"I suppose you don't usually see much under water?" said I.
"Depends on what water it is," answered Timmans.
"All rivers around New York are black as ink twenty feet down," remarked Atkinson.
"I know they are," said Timmans, "but I've seen different rivers. When I was diving off the Kennebec's mouth, five miles southeast of the Seguin light (we were getting up the wreck of theMary Lee), then, gentlemen, I looked through as beautiful clear water as you could find in a drug-store filter. Why, it reminded me of the West Indies. I could see plainly for, well, certainly seventy-five feet over swaying kelp-weed, eight feet high, with blood-red leaves as big as a barrel, all dotted over with black spots. There were acres and acres of it, swarming with rock-crabs and lobsters and all kinds of fish."
"Any sharks?" said I.
Hansen and Atkinson smiled, for this is a question always put to divers, who usually have to admit that they never even saw a shark. Not so Timmans.
"I had an experience with a shark," he answered gravely, "but it wasn't up in Maine. It was while we were trying to save a three-thousand-ton steamer of the Hamburg-American Packet Company, wrecked on a bar in the Magdalena River, United States of Colombia. I'd been working for days patching her keel, hung on a swinging shelf we'd lowered along her side, and every time I went down I saw swarms of red snappers and butterfish under my shelf, darting after the refuse I'd scrape off her plates; and there were big jewfish, too, and I used to harpoon 'em for the men to eat. In-fact, I about kept our crew suppliedwith fresh fish that way. Well, on one particular day I noticed a sudden shadow against the light, and there was a shark sure enough; not such an enormous one, but twelve feet long anyhow—big enough to make me uneasy. He swam slowly around me, and then kept perfectly still, looking straight at me with his little wicked eyes. I didn't know what minute he might make a rush, so I caught up a hammer I was working with—it was my only weapon—and struck it against the steamer's iron side as hard as I could. You know a blow like that sounds louder under water than it does in the air, and it frightened the shark so he went off like a flash."
"Perhaps he wasn't hungry," laughed one of the crew.
"Not hungry? I'll tell you how hungry those sharks were. They'd swallow big chunks of pork, sir, nailed and wired to barrel heads, as fast as we could chuck 'em overboard; swallow nails, wire, barrel heads, and all, and then we'd haul 'em in by ropes, that did for fish-lines, only it took twenty or thirty men to do the hauling. And there were plenty of sharks 'round, only they never seemed to tackle a man in the suit."
"Some say it's the fire-light of the valve bubbles that scares sharks off," commented Atkinson. "I don't know what it is, but I know the bubbles shine something wonderful as you watch 'em boiling up out of your helmet."
"Phosphorescence," I suggested, and then went back into the talk for some broken threads.
"How about that steamer you were telling about," I asked; "the one that was wrecked on the bar? Did you save her?"
"I should say we did," replied Timmans, "and Iguess the company wished we hadn't; it cost them more money than the job was worth. Why, if I should start telling how we saved that steamer I don't know when I'd get through. It took us eight solid months. Yes, sir, and that meant sixty men to feed and pay wages to—forty in the wrecking-crew and twenty on the tug. Oh, but we did have trouble—trouble all the time, but we had fun, too, especially when some o' these gay Bowery lads we'd picked up got loose on the mainland. Talk about scraps!"
Timmans paused as if for invitations to spin the whole yarn, and these he immediately received.
"Tell about painting the alligator," urged Hansen.
"Oh, that was a bit of foolishness me an' another fellow done. He was a Dutchman, and got me to help him catch an alligator one day. He said he could bring him up North and get a big price for him. Well, we noosed one after a whole lot of chasing in a lagoon, and kept him four or five weeks, but he wouldn't eat, and the boys all gave us the laugh. So the Dutchman got up a scheme to paint him white and put him back in the lagoon. His idea was that this white alligator would scare out all the other alligators, and then we'd capture mebbe twenty or thirty on the banks, and make our fortune."
He paused a moment with a twinkling eye, and Hansen snickered.
"Well, we done it. We painted that alligator white, and put him back in the lagoon, and you can shoot me if those other alligators didn't eat him. Yes, sir; they chewed him clean up before we'd hardly got the ropes off him."
"What did the Dutchman say?" asked Hansen, shaking with mirth.
"He stuck to it his idea was all right, but it was theblamed alligator's fault for being too weak with fasting to fight the ones as weren't painted, and he wanted somebody to help him catch another, but nobody would."
A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT'S PROPELLER.A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT'S PROPELLER.
Then Timmans came back to the saving of the wreck, and it really was an amazing story of patience and ingenuity against endless obstacles. I doubt if men from anywhere but America would have carried such a hopeless undertaking through to success. First they rigged up a wire railway from wreck to shore, and slid off a valuable cargo of alpaca, silks, and beerbit by bit along the wire to land (where they conscientiously drank the beer). Then they hitched a hawser to the steamer, and by clever engineering managed to drag her off the bar against the river current; but presently this current, sweeping down from the mountains, grew too swift for the wrecking-tug, and she in turn was dragged down stream against all the strength of her engines, and saw herself threatened with destruction on the bar. Then the captain of the tug, in his peril, ordered the hawser cut, and thirty-nine men of the wrecking-crew were left to their fate on the abandoned wreck. Their adventures alone would make a thrilling chapter, but they were rescued finally from the half-sinking steamer, after she had somehow crossed the bar and wrecked herself anew in the breakers some miles down the coast.
Then weeks passed while the wrecking-crew worked at patching the steamer's holes so that she would float, and every day Timmans went down in his suit and did blacksmith work and carpenter work on her torn plates and beams, in constant danger of being crushed in the deep sand trough she rocked and slid in. Sometimes the whole iron hull, beaten against by the ocean, would go grinding along, breaking down a wall of sand ten feet high, almost as fast as Timmans could walk. And to be caught between her side and that wall would have ended his days forthwith. Diving-suit and man would have been crushed like an egg-shell.
Finally, when she was ready they made fast a sixteen-inch hawser, and put on full steam to pull her off into deep water. Off she came, and all was going well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came upon them, and the steamer turned broadside to itsfury, and the great hawser snapped like a kite-string, and back she went on a coral-reef.
Once more they began at the beginning, and in time had another hawser ready, and tried again. This time the hawser parted by grinding on the beach as they dragged her.
Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch hawser, wound with wire, that would resist the friction of rocks and sand, and all would have happened as they hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the hawser strands, piercing the wire and severing the big tow-line. The wrecking company still shows the saw of that mischievous fish among its curiosities.
So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with details of how they stopped some fresh leaks with sixty-five barrels of cement, and how they quelled a mutiny and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hundred miles, until they landed her home, two hundred and fifty-odd days after the expedition started. All going to show the kind of stuff American wreckers are made of.
ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the wrecking company, if he would let me go down in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly, with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling of people who, on various occasions, had teased to go down, and then had backed out at the critical moment, sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass was being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, for Atkinson seemed to imply that I, of course, would be different from such people, and go down like a veteran, whereas I was as yet onlythinkingof going down!
"There's a wreck on the Hackensack," said he; "it's a coal-barge sunk in twenty feet of water. We'll be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down about noon, and I'll put the suit on you."
Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke as if the thing were settled.
I thought it over that evening, and decided not to go down. It was not worth while to take such a risk; it was a foolish idea. Then I changed my mind: I would go down. I must not miss such a chance; it would give me a better understanding of this strange business; and there was no particular danger in it, only a little discomfort. Then I wavered again, andthought of accidents to divers, and tragedies of diving. What if something went wrong! What if the hose burst or the air-valve stuck! Or suppose I should injure my hearing, in spite of Atkinson's assurance? I looked up a book on diving, and found that certain persons are warned not to try it—full-blooded men, very pale men, men who suffer much from headache, men subject to rheumatism, men with poor hearts or lungs, and others. The list seemed to include everybody, and certainly included me on at least two counts. Nevertheless I kept to my purpose; I would go down.
It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before slack water (slack water is the diver's harvest-time), when the crew of the steam-pumpDunderberggathered on deck to witness my descent and assist in dressing me; for no diver can dress himself. The putting on a diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous pair of rubber boots reaching up to the chin, and provided with sleeves that clutch the wrists tightly with clinging bands, to keep out the water. Thus incased, you feel as helpless and oppressed as a tightly stuffed sawdust doll, and you stand anxiously while the men put the gasket (a rubber joint) over your shoulders and make it fast with thumb-screws, under a heavy copper collar. Next you step into a pair of thirty-pound iron shoes that are strapped over your rubber feet. And now they lead you to an iron ladder that reaches down from rail to water. You lift your feet somehow over the side, right foot, left foot, and feel around for the ladder-rungs. Then you bend forward on the deck, face down, as a man would lay his neck on the block. This is to let the helpers make fast around your waist the belt that is to sink you presently with its hundred pounds of lead. Under thisbelt you feel the life-line noose hugging below your arms, a stout rope trailing along the deck, that will follow you to the bottom, and haul you back againsafely, let us hope. Beside it trails the precious black hose that brings you air.
THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER'S SUIT.THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER'S SUIT.
Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with its three goggle-eyes, and prepares to screw it on. The men watch your face sharply; they have seen novices weaken here.
"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, cheerfully.
I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt a very real emotion. I watched two lads at the air-pump wheels as if they were executioners, though both had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay pipe. I thought how good it was to stay in the sunshine, and not go down under a muddy river in a diving-suit.
"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the signals again—three slow jerks on the life-line to come up, and so on.
Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars against the collar. I see a man's hands through the round glasses crisscrossed over with protecting wires; he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds the face-glass before my last little open window. "Go ahead wid de pump," calls a queer voice, and forthwith a sweetish, warmish breath enters the helmet, and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders.
"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," somebody calls; "if you don't get enough, pull twice." I wonder how I am to know whether I am getting too much or not enough, but there is no time to find out. I have just a moment for one deep breath from the outside, when there is no more "outside" for me; the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy fingers are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, and hands are fussing with hose and life-line, makingthem fast to lugs on the helmet-face, one on each side, so that the hose drops away under my left arm, and the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap on my big copper crown, which means I must start down. That is the signal.
I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find I can. One step downward, and I feel a tug at my trousers as the air-feed plumps them out. Step by step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to my waist, to my shoulders—to my head. With a roar in my ears, and a flash of silver bubbles, I sink beneath the surface; I reach the ladder's end, loose my hold on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region, slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's careful handling) on the barge's deck just outside her combings, and can reach one heavy foot over the depth of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; indeed, I am pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my sensations. It is true there is a pressure in my ears, but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it would have been different), and I feel rather a sense of exhilaration from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales would give me close to four hundred pounds.
THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.
The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyantthanis good for a diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush—four hundred pounds and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experiencelike this, one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long ashe could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled. Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line and taking to his heels.
Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the reverse of amusing to a diver, who must be raised and lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy freight elevator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air-pressure.
I sat down on the deck and took note of things. The golden color of the water was due to the sunshine through it and the mud in it—a fine effect from a mean cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the squeeze of rubber wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit over, and found the legs pressed hard against my body with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive the latter into the deck. I knew that divers use tools under water—the hammer, the saw, the crowbar, etc.—almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to see if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I had expected. I hit the nail on the head nearly every time. Nor did the water resistance matter much; my nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed quicker, after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkinson's words about the great fatigue of work under water.
I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the wreck. Strange to think that if I stepped off I should fall to the bottom (unless the life-line held me) just as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And then I felt the diver's utter helplessness: he cannot lifthimself; he cannot speak; he cannot save himself, except as those lines save him. Let them part, let one of them choke, and he dies instantly.
And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat sounded like cries of distress, and the noise in my ears grew like the roar of a train. All divers below hear this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one with another: when two are down together, they communicate by taps and jerks, as they do with the tenders above. I bent my head back, and could see a stream of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the escape-valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging to my little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that rose slowly. The old Hackensack was boiling all about me, and I saw how there may well be reason in the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from the helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent light in the bubbles) is the diver's safeguard against creatures of the deep.
Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well—a delightful experience, a thing distinctly worth the doing. It was time to feel for the life-line and give the three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now? I was a little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver (even old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bearings. There! one, two, three. And the answer comes straightway down the line—one, two, three. That means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. Now the rope tightens under my arms, and easily, slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden water pales to silver, the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the surface by the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How heavy I have suddenly become without the river to buoy me! This climbing the ladder is the hardest task of all; it is like carrying two men on one's back. AgainI bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my windows. A twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, with a suck of air. The test is over.
"You done well," is the greeting I receive; and the divers welcome me almost as one of their craft. Henceforth I have friends among these quiet men whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and look they do without flinching) as they fare over river and sea, and under river and sea, in search of wrecks.
I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him "Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings, or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.
All these callings (and some others) Myers has pursued with eagerness and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry, sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me some time ago.
"BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS.""BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS."
Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which iscertainly a queer place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really, half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three thousand feet for his afternoon"skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the celebrated aëronaut (also the professor's wife), making an ascension now and then from the front lawn in a chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons.
"FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE.""FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE."
And in winter, should you explore the upper rooms of the house, you would find all the balloons tucked away snugly in cocoons, as it were, fast asleep, ranged along the attic floor, each under its net, each ticketed with a record of its work, marked for good or bad conduct after it has been tested by master or mistress.
For weeks at a time in the experiment season a captive balloon hovers above the Frankfort farm, say twelve hundred feet up, and the tricks they play with that balloon would draw all the boys in the country, if their parents would let them go. Three guy-ropes hold the balloon steady like legs of an enormous tripod, and straight down from the netting a fourth rope hangs free. Now, imagine swinging on a rope twelve hundred feet long! They do that often for tests of flying-machines or aëroplanes—swing off the housetop, and sail away in a long, slow curve, just clearing the ground, and land on top of a windmill at the far side of the grounds. That's a swing worth talking about! And fancy a man hitched fast to this rope by shoulder-straps, and as he swings flapping a pair of great wings made of feathers and silk, and trying to steer with a ridiculous spreading tail of the same materials. The professor had a visit from such a man, who had spent years and a fortune in contriving this flying device, which, alas! would never fly.
"A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK—WHICH, ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY.""A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK—WHICH, ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY."
Professor Myers, like most aëronauts, insists that traveling by balloon, for one who understands it, is no more perilous, but rather less so, than ordinary travel by rail or trolley or motor carriage. He points out that for thirty-odd years he and his wife have led a most active aëronaut existence, have done all things that are done in balloons, besides some new ones, and got no harm from it—some substantial good rather, notably an aërial torpedo (operated by electricity fromthe ground), which flies swiftly in any desired direction, its silken fans and aluminum propeller under perfect control from a switchboard; also the "skycycle" balloon, which lifts the aëronaut in a suspended saddle and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flapping aëroplanes (these driven by hands and feet), to make a gain on the wind, when going with it, of ten or twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to go against the wind, but selecting currents from the many available ones that favor his purpose. "What isthe use," says he, "of fighting the wind when you can make the wind fight for you? People who take trains or boats wait for a certain hour or a certain tide, in the same way we wait for a certain wind current, and there is never long to wait, for the wind blows in totally different directions at different altitudes."
"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about these varying currents?"
"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds and by observations with kites and other instruments. And we would soon know much more if experimenters would work on these lines of conquering nature by yielding to her rather than opposing her."
In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there were many, we went first into the spectacular side of ballooning, the more obviously interesting part, stories of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling adventure, of the fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles in sixty minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the English aëronaut who leaped from his car to death in the sea that a comrade might be saved through the lessened weight, of two lovesick Frenchmen who duelled with pistols from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped in wonder from the earth and shuddered when one silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down to death with principal and second. And many more of that kind which, I must say, leave one far from convinced on the non-danger point.
Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things about balloons—this, for instance, that the rapid rise of an air-ship makes an aëronaut suffer the same pain and pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows, only now the air presses from inside the head outward. And relief from this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by repeatedly opening the mouth and swallowing.
PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE."PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE."
And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. The balloon is always standing still to the person in it, while the earth rushes madly along, forty, sixty, ninety miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile the ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deepening bowl, while the horizon sweeps up like a loosenedspring. Then presently this illusion passes, and you see everything flat. There are no hills any more, nor villages; no towers nor steep descents, only a level surface, marked charmingly in color, sometimes in wonderful mosaics, and strangely in light and shade. At the height of two miles nothing is familiar; you might as well be looking at the moon, for all you can recognize. Roads become yellowish lines; rivers brownish lines (and the water vanishes); a mountain-range becomes a shaded strip, with less shade on one edge (where the sun is) than on the other; a forest becomes a patch of color; a town another patch. There is scarcely any difference between water and land, and you see to the bottom of a lake, so that the configuration of its bed in valley and hill are apparent through the color and the shading. This singular disappearance of water bodies, for it amounts to almost that, has an evident importance.
"I'll tell you what we did on Lake Ontario," said the professor, "as a result of observations I made there from a balloon. In sailing over the lake on one occasion I remarked a number of small shaded spots which puzzled me. I could not imagine what they were. Finally, with the help of powerful field-glasses, I made them out to be wrecks sunk at various depths, and I realized that Lake Ontario, and indeed all the great lakes, abound in vessels which have gone down during centuries and never been recovered. No one can estimate the treasure which lies there waiting for some one to reclaim it. And I saw that it is a perfectly simple matter to locate these wrecks from a balloon, and to prove this I organized a modest wrecking expedition, and indicated to the diver where he was to go down. Down he went at that point, and found the wreck I had seen, and we pumped good coal out of her by hundredsof tons. What I did then on a small scale might be done on a large scale by any one willing to undertake it."
Of course I asked the professor why it is that an aëronaut can see down into a lake better than, say, an observer in a boat, and he explained that there is a great gain in intensity of terrestrial illumination when the viewpoint is at a height, because the sun's rays converge toward the earth, the sun being so many times larger, and therefore (this is his theory) a man lifted above the earth gets many more solar rays reflected to him from a given area than he would get if nearer to that area. In a word, it is a matter of optics and angles, but, the professor declares, most assuredly a fact.
HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE MILE. (Photographed from a balloon.)HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE MILE.(Photographed from a balloon.)
Never before these talks did I realize how busy an aëronaut is, how much there is to do in a balloon. Besides attending to valve-cords and ballast there is the barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can you know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly as you rise, slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand feet. Rising or falling, you know the worst or the best there. Sometimes the needle sticks, the barometer will not work, and you must cast overside pieces of tissue-paper to see by their rise or fall if you are going up or down. By your senses alone you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling, or your distance from the earth. That is most deceiving. Then you must have your watch ready to reckon your speed, so many thousand feet up or down in so many seconds, and your map spread out (nailed to a board, and that lashed fast), to tell where you are, and your compass out to fix the north and south points, for a balloon twists slowly all the time, twists one way going up and the other way coming down. Nobody knows just whythis is, unless it be the unequal drawing of the seams as the fabric swells and shrinks.
"I always keep the mouth of my balloon within easy reach," said the professor, "and play with it as an engineer does with his throttle-valve. Sometimes I even tie it shut when I am sailing, but that is dangerous."
"Why dangerous?"
"Because the balloon might ascend suddenly, and the expanding gas burst it."
"Can you see up into the balloon," I asked, "through the mouth?"
"Of course you can, and a beautiful sight it is. You look up through a round window, twenty inches or so in diameter, into the great bag, swelled out fifty or sixty feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so that every line and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you see a spread of gold and amber melting away in changing colors to the shaded parts. The balloon seems to be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel that your balloon is alive."
"Does it make any noise?"
"Usually not. Now and then there is a creaking of the basket or a rustle of fabric, as you pass from one wind current to another, but as you drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an hour and beaten it."
"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?"
"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. You seem to be at the very point where the lightningstarts and the thunder-crash is born. All about you are roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up on you and down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I never heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, it is a common thing for operators on the ground even in fair weather to get shocks of atmospheric electricity down the anchor ropes of captive balloons."
Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of exciting times reporting the great yacht races from captive balloons (with reporters turning seasick in the plunging basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called parhelions) cast on clouds, and wonderful light effects, as when a marveling aëronaut looks down upon a sea of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through black clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath.
I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, say above three miles, the voice almost fails to serve, or, rather, the rarefied air loses in great part its power of voice transmission, so that in the vast silent spaces of the sky one aëronaut must literally shout to another in the same basket to make himself heard. One would say that the great, calm heavens resent the chattering intrusion of noisy little men.
IN all their experiments at the farm, Professor Myers and Mme. Carlotta have worked on individual lines, he striving of late years to perfect his skycycle (which is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging of propellers and fans underneath), while she has been content to gain skill in steering a balloon of ordinary shape by merely moving her body and utilizing varying air-currents, for the wind blows in different directions as you ascend.
It is remarkable how the position of an aëronaut's body may alter a balloon's movements. It is possible, for instance, to make a balloon ascend or descend, without touching valve or ballast, by a simple change of position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from edge to edge of the basket, and by throwing your weight first on one foot and then on the other you will give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you, and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hundreds of feet. Or if you would make it descend (all this the professor explained to me), stand with your feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide apart so that the fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway your hips forward as far as you can, then back as far as you can, and keep doing this. Now the wrigglingprocess is reversed; and this time the basket goes first, "tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends.
MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE FOOT-BOARD.MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE FOOT-BOARD.
This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Carlotta to pass easily from one train of clouds to another, and, by long study of these cross-moving aërial trains,she is able to pick out the one she wants for a certain destination with almost the precision of a foot-passenger selecting his particular street-car or changing from one to another. And in descending she has learned to steer forward or back, to left or right, by tipping the basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to take. The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board as a ship follows her rudder.
An almost incredible instance of the skill attained by Carlotta in these experiments was furnished some dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made an ascension never forgotten by the people of that city. It was a grand occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's gift of the Crystal Palace to her loyal subjects, and Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty-five thousand people, as was estimated, were packed inside the Exposition grounds to see the aëronaut rise to the clouds. And there at the appointed time stood Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude about her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt over a gymnasium suit, and made an attractive picture with her fine figure and golden-bronze hair. So thought various city dignitaries, who chatted with her admiringly while the crowd surged about them.
Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching the manœuvers of some Indians hired by a committee to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles distant, where it had been filled. This was rather against the professor's judgment, for the Rideau River, flowing by the grounds, offered an obstacle that could be overcome only with the help of canoes and tow-lines; and to paddle a big balloon across a river, a fresh-filled, hard-tugging balloon, is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. And in spite of all their skill these Indians found themselves presently lifted into the air, canoes and all (oh,they were badly frightened Indians!), not quite clear of the water, but high enough to make it doubtful if they would ever reach shore, and highly interesting to the crowd which pressed down to the river, even into the river, in well-meant efforts to help, and dragged the balloon up the bank and along toward the platform with such eagerness that they tore great rents in it that let out the gas in volumes.
In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon became the center of a struggling mass of people, who slowly pressed in from all sides to see what the matter was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill with those at that point; and had not Carlotta acted on a flash of inspiration there would surely have been disaster in that merciless crush. She looked over the shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw the danger—saw women held helpless and fainting in that jam of bodies; saw one way, and only one, to save the situation, and took that way. Stepping off the platform, she ran lightly and swiftly over heads and shoulders, packed solid, and came to the balloon. Such was the people's fright that they scarcely felt her pass.
"You can't go up," cried her husband; "the balloon is a wreck."
"I must go up," she answered; "if I don't these people will be crushed to death."
"There's a hole in her big enough to drive a team through," he protested; but already she was in the basket, and a great cheer arose.
"IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND THEMSELVES PRESENTLY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND ALL.""IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND THEMSELVES PRESENTLY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND ALL."
"It's better to risk one life than many," she answered with decision, and, turning to the crowd, motioned them to loose the car. In their wonder the mad multitude forgot their fear, and the struggling quieted. All eyes were now on the balloon; one woman's couragehad quelled the panic. The danger to the crowd was past, to the woman just beginning.
"Wait a moment," shouted Professor Myers; "you must have more ballast." But in the din of voices she misunderstood him and cast out the last bag. Then, with a great heave and a flapping of its torn sides, the balloon wrenched itself free and shot upward, a cripple soaring with its last strength. Up and up it went, higher and higher as the small store of gas expanded. That tattered balloon, with its seams gaping open, raised itself somehow two miles over the city of Ottawa, and then almost immediately began to fall. The gas stayed in just long enough to lift the broken bag, and then left it to dash downward. Professor Myers, heart-sick on the ground, turned his eyes away, sure that he had seen his wife alive for the last time.
But Carlotta was of no such mind. She had saved the crowd, now she would save herself; and even as the balloon dropped with frightful speed, she put her plan into action. Swinging herself up on the netting, she caught the flapping silk above a long tear, and drew it down with all her weight until it reached the car. Instantly the air rushed in underneath, and bellied out the fabric into a great umbrella, a parachute improvised from a ripped balloon. Now they were slowing up; they had put the brakes on, and now they were soaring easily, drifting with the wind. Carlotta drew a long breath of relief and looked down. They were still a mile above ground. She had the runaway in hand, but where should she land him? Most aëronauts would have been thankful enough to get down alive anywhere; she proposed to do a feat of steering as well. No doubt there was some gas in the upper part of the bag to help her, but in the main she was guiding a parachute; and she guided it so skilfully by tipping the foot-boardforward or back, to left or right, that she landed finally in a clump of evergreen-trees, some fifteen miles from Ottawa, that she had selected as the very place she proposed to land. And great were the rejoicings when it was known that she had come to no harm.
The story had an interesting sequel the following year, when Carlotta made another ascension from the same place.
"Where will you land this time?" one of the committee asked her.
Carlotta looked at the clouds a moment, then, smiling, said, "If you like, I will land exactly where I did last year."
This they all declared impossible, for the wind was strong in just the opposite direction; but Carlotta insisted she would land in that clump of evergreens and nowhere else. And she kept her word. She had observed that at a certain height the wind was favorable to her purpose, and by the same tactics of seeking the right wind-currents and by the same clever foot-board tipping she reached the point she was steering for, to the general wonder and admiration.
My acquaintance with Professor Myers has given me some light on a question often in my mind; that is, what kind of children these men have who follow careers of danger and daring. Will the son of a steeple-climber climb steeples? Will the daughter of a lion-tamer be afraid of a mouse? And so on. Of course, with both father and mother aëronauts, as in this case, it would be strange indeed if their child did not love balloons; and so it has turned out, for Miss Aërial Myers, now a girl in her teens, has already made various ascensions, and enjoys nothing better than soaring aloft on her father's skycycle, which she steers skilfully. Her first experience of a voyage in the air ismemorable for two facts, that it nearly brought destruction to herself and her mother, and drew attention to an important but little-known fact in ballooning science.
It was some years ago, at the Syracuse County Fair, and a balloon race had been advertised between Carlotta and young Tysdell, an assistant of Professor Myers. For this event an enormous crowd had gathered on the grounds. And now (by what tears and pleadings who can say?) Miss Aërial, aged eleven, had persuaded her too fond mother to take her along, and off they went, amid cheers and wavings, with a strong breeze blowing, and the child peering down at the dwindling earth over the basket-side. She watched the roads change into yellow streaks, and the hills swing up from back of the horizon, and the clouds spread away below them like a sea. She watched her mother take readings of compass and barometer, and as the wind swept them along to new view-points she would cry out, "Here comes another town, mama!" and clap her hands as the town raced by.