Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1874 — Coming Down in a Parachute. [ARTICLE]

Coming Down in a Parachute.

George August* B*l* contributes the following to the Belgravia Magazine: During the early part of 1851 there bad been quite *n epidemic of balloon accidents. Two young aeronauts whom I knew had been smashed within a fortnight ; and Albert Smith, whom 1 greatly loved and esteemed, had been within an aoe of losing his life in falling from the car of a balloon on some scaffold'poles. Thus on my mental line of railway the “danger” signal was displayed very plainly indeed; but I was young and foolish, and endowed neither with superstition nor ’frith common sense. (The first is very often an excellent substitute for the last.) So I said I would go. My brother, who was accustomed to my having my own way. let me have it. Soycr was unable to grant me a free pass for the skyey realms, since the balloon was worked as the inventor’s own speculation, and ascending and descending—what with charges for gas and manual labor, carting the dead body of the machine, when its gaseous soul has expired, to the nearest railway station, and the contingencies of damages to property — are somewhat expensive matters. Withal the inventor, in consideration of my being “connected with the press" (with which I had at the time about as much connection as a call-boy on board a penny steamer has with an iron-clad man-of-war), agreed to take me up at “cost price,” which he opined, barring accidents, would not exceed a couple of pounds. A minute afterward I had shaken hands with half a dozen friends and had clambered into the car. Then there was a Cry of “ Let go-!” the crowdcheered—they would have been pleasurably excited had we been going to be hanged—the band in an adjacenft pavilion struck up “Sec the conquering hero comes” (a slightly inappropriate melody, seeing that we were departing and not arriving), and up we went. So many ladies and gentlemen have made “captive” and “free” balloon ascents within the last few years that it would simply be an act of impertinence on my part to describe minutely the phenomena of an ascent from the neighborhood of London; how you do not at first appear to he rising but stationary, while the earth, on the other hand, seems to be sinking beneath you; how, if there arc j any clouds in your part of the sky when i you have passed through the lowermost i banks of vapor and look down on the j fleecy, floating masses beneath you, you j experience a momentary feeling of pride j —sheer assinine pride; or how, being j free from clouds, you look down and see stretching around you the great green earth, and immediately below. London, diminished to the size of a model in a museum, St. Paul’s seeming no bigger than a pea and the monument looking ‘no longer than a pin, while the smoke of London seems stationary over it, a thin, sleezv, blue blanket in two strips, one for t he Middlesex and oue for the Surrey side and cut precisely to the shape of the city and suburbs, through the whole running the glinting river like a skein of quicksilver. 1 must mention that my view of the wondrous panorama around and beneath was somewhat impeded by the fact that Ve were top-hampered by a quantity of toy-balloons, mere inflated linen bags fashioned as lions, dragons, fish and other preposterous forms, and all emblazoned Willi the cognizance of the Symposium. These wretched little trifles were indirectly the cause of our undoing. The aeronaut had instructions to cut the wind-bags adrift when he ascended a short distance, in order that they might amuse the gobemouche* |of Brompton and Fulham road, and scatter adv ertisements of the Symposium far and wide. Thus the little old man, durtng the first five minutes of his ascent, had been so busy with his pocket-knife, loosing these impediment* i, that he had forgot ten a precaution very necessary to Our safety. While the balloon is on the ground it is customary to close the neck of the machine by means of a handkerchief tied in a slip-knot, in order to prevent the admixture of the heavy lower stratum of atmospheric air with the more buoyant carburettcd hydrogen inside the balloon. Directly the balloon ascends the prudent aeronaut slips off' the handkerchief. Our aeronaut, busied with his trumjiery windbags, did no such thing. The assistant may have been unaware that the thing ought to be done. He cried out gleefully that we had risen to the altitude of one mile—that we were just over Fulham Church, and that we were about to cross the Thames. Just then 1 heard a sharp, crackling report, precisely like that of a musket shot, above my head. The balloon had burst. It could scarcely, under the circumstances, have done anything but burst. The gas in the machine had become rarefied. and had rapidly expanded. it could not escape from above, the valve was closed; it could not escape from below, the neck was elosed. So it went to smash, just as an inflated and air-tight bag of paper goes to smash between the palms of a school boy's hands. So we fell, as a stone falls, half a mile. When we ascended, it, had appeared to me that the earth was sinking beneath us. Now the glober-fields, houses, lampposts. chimney-pots —seemed to be rushing up to us with literally inconceivable rapidity. There was'in particular one tall church-steeple which by the celerity of its approach seemed to >be horribly anxious that I should be impaled upon its apex. It could not have been Fulham Church; but whatever and wherever was the edifice, it was there rushing up at me : and I declare that the grotesqueness . of the position of impalement—all legs and wings, like a cockchafer—distinctly and visibly occurred to me. T declare also, nan* phrases. that there arose before, me no ••panorama" of mv early life or of my bygone acts arql deeds, as such panoramas are said to have arisen before the eyes of persons rescued at the very last instant from hanging or drowning. Yet I do plainly and literally remember several things: that I heard a voice cry with an oath, “ Let go!” and “ Cut! cut!” and that a knife was thrust into my hand: and it seemed afterward that the assistant and I had pitched out all the ballast in the balloon—bags and all—and that I had cut away the grapnel or anchor from the side of the car. That I had -done so was plain from two of my fingers being jagged across by the knife* What became of the grapnel we never knew; but if it nad fallen in a populous street it would in all probability- have killed somebody. The heavy bags of ballast, too, must have fallen like stones. The f final thing I remember during our de- | scent was droll enough. Just before the balloon left the Pre d’Orsay, my dear, kind brother had thrown over my>shoul- j deis a light paletot, observing with a laugh that I might feel it rather cold “ up j there.” I donned this garment as we ; ascended, and I remember saying as we , came thundering down, “ Charley’s coat i will be tom to ribbons.” So much for I

panoramic effects when the jaws of death seem to be yawning for us. To the possession of what J* ordinarily termed " presence of mind on the occasion I disdainfully decline to lay claim. What 1 did in the matter of the grapnel and the ballast was done mechanically and well-nigh unconsciously; and I was desperately and mortally “terrified. A few days after the accident I met the aeronaut's assistant, and 1 had the curiosity to sound him as to my demeanor during the fall* “ Sir,” he very candidly replied, “you kept your mouth wide open, and ywt wire as wy your breeches." I had been clad at the time in light summer attire. “ And you? I continued. “Well out of it,” quoth the aeronaut’s assistant, who was seemingly a philosopher; ami so went his way. Meanwhile —the tennis well-nigh inappropriate, since there was scarcely any ” while” to be “ mean '—the aeronaut, who looked like a sailor, had not lost his presence of mind, and had not been idle. He saw at a glance—this brave little old man—although he had been forgetful in the matter of the slip-knotted handkerchief—wherein our only chance of safety lay. He jumped up into the shrouds of the balloon, cut the cords which attached the neck of the machine to the hoop, and away to the very top of the netting flew the whole of the exhausted silk body of the sausage. Then it formed a cupola’of the approved umbrella pattern — it formed a parachute} It steadied instantly. There was no collapse, and down we came swiftly but easily, in a slanting direction, alighting among the cabbages in a market garden, Fulham Yields. The ear struck the elastic earth with violence, and rebounded, clearing a hedge a distance of some twenty feet. Then the silk, and the netting, and the hoop, and the car itself fell atop of us among the cabbages. We were dragged forth from the ruins of the Sausage only to be hustled and robbed of all the money in our pockets by a ruffianly crew of working market-gardeners; and the proprietor of the light cart who consented to drive me from Fulham to Kensington Gore demanded a guinea as his fare, on the ground that “ balloons didn’t fall every day.” Tie was far from complimentary too about the accident itself, remarking ironically that this “wos cum Of carrying up a lot of dogs and monkeys.” This ingenuous hut mercenary person had mistaken our windbag dragons and fishes swaling through the air, when we ascended, for living animals. 1 will omit any account of the congratulations iiliich were indulged in on our return to Gore House ; vet I cannot conclude this paper without noting a preg mint but somewhat strongly-worded remark made by the little old aeronaut. While everybody was grasping his hands JtUldjiayiPK him well-deserved compliments on his intrepidity; lie suddenly drew on one side, folded his arms, and sternly inquired: “ Who will say now t/uit you c<int come down ina parachute?" The manner of putting the query was irreverent, hut the matter thereof was cogent. Three-and-tweuty years after the event 1 have narrated I find myself forcibly imbued with the conviction that it is possible to descend in safety from any height by means of a parachute, but that there are ten thousand chances to one against the man who tries the venture surviving to tell the tale. And please to remember that I had* no intention of coming down in a parachute. I contracted ti/ come down in a Sausage balloon; but I will do the inventor the justice to mention that he never asked me for my’share of the expenses.