The delicate sensibility of balloons is well known.It is sufficient to throw out the lightest article to produce a difference in its vertical position.The apparatus in the air is like a balance of mathematical precision.It can be thus easily understood that when it is lightened of any considerable weight its movement will be impetuous and sudden.So it happened on this occasion.But after being suspended for an instant aloft, the balloon began to redescend, the gas escaping by the rent which it was impossible to repair.
The men had done all that men could do.No human efforts could save them now.
They must trust to the mercy of Him who rules the elements.
At four o'clock the balloon was only 500 feet above the surface of the water.
A loud barking was heard.A dog accompanied the voyagers, and was held pressed close to his master in the meshes of the net.
"Top has seen something," cried one of the men.Then immediately a loud voice shouted,--"Land! land!" The balloon, which the wind still drove towards the southwest, had since daybreak gone a considerable distance, which might be reckoned by hundreds of miles, and a tolerably high land had, in fact, appeared in that direction.But this land was still thirty miles off.It would not take less than an hour to get to it, and then there was the chance of falling to leeward.
An hour! Might not the balloon before that be emptied of all the fluid it yet retained?
Such was the terrible question! The voyagers could distinctly see that solid spot which they must reach at any cost.They were ignorant of what it was, whether an island or a continent, for they did not know to what part of the world the hurricane had driven them.But they must reach this land, whether inhabited or desolate, whether hospitable or not.
It was evident that the balloon could no longer support itself! Several times already had the crests of the enormous billows licked the bottom of the net, making it still heavier, and the balloon only half rose, like a bird with a wounded wing.Half an hour later the land was not more than a mile off, but the balloon, exhausted, flabby, hanging in great folds, had gas in its upper part alone.The voyagers, clinging to the net, were still too heavy for it, and soon, half plunged into the sea, they were beaten by the furious waves.The balloon-case bulged out again, and the wind, taking it, drove it along like a vessel.Might it not possibly thus reach the land?
But, when only two fathoms off, terrible cries resounded from four pairs of lungs at once.The balloon, which had appeared as if it would never again rise, suddenly made an unexpected bound, after having been struck by a tremendous sea.As if it had been at that instant relieved of a new part of its weight, it mounted to a height of 1,500 feet, and here it met a current of wind, which instead of taking it directly to the coast, carried it in a nearly parallel direction.
At last, two minutes later, it reproached obliquely, and finally fell on a sandy beach, out of the reach of the waves.
The voyagers, aiding each other, managed to disengage themselves from the meshes of the net.The balloon, relieved of their weight, was taken by the wind, and like a wounded bird which revives for an instant, disappeared into space.
But the car had contained five passengers, with a dog, and the balloon only left four on the shore.
The missing person had evidently been swept off by the sea, which had just struck the net, and it was owing to this circumstance that the lightened balloon rose the last time, and then soon after reached the land.
Scarcely had the four castaways set foot on firm ground, than they all, thinking of the absent one, simultaneously exclaimed, "Perhaps he will try to swim to land! Let us save him! let us save him!"