There is a flash upward and a faint roar. It is a railway train, the locomotive's fires, maybe, illuminating for a moment its smoke as it rises.
Then for safety we throw out more ballast, and rise through the black solitudes of the clouds into a soul-lifting burst of splendid starlight. There, alone with the constellations, we await the dawn.
And when the dawn comes, red and gold and purple in its glory, one is almost loth to seek the earth again, although the novelty of landing in who knows what part of Europe affords still another unique pleasure.
For many the great charm of all ballooning lies here. The balloonist becomes an explorer. Say that you are a young man who would roam, who would enjoy adventures, who would penetrate the unknown and deal with the unexpected--but say that you are tied down at home by family and business. I advise you to take to spherical ballooning. At noon you lunch peaceably amid your family. At 2 P.M. you mount. Ten minutes later you are no longer a commonplace citizen--you are an explorer, an adventurer of the unknown as truly as they who freeze on Greenland's icy mountains or melt on India's coral strand.
You know but vaguely where you are and cannot know where you are going. Yet much may depend upon your choice as well as your skill and experience. The choice of altitude is yours--whether to accept this current or mount higher and go with another. You may mount above the clouds, where one breathes oxygen from tubes, while the earth, in the last glimpse you had of it, seems to spin beneath you, and you lose all bearings; or you may descend and scud along the surface, aided by your guide rope and a dipperful of ballast to leap over trees and houses--giant leaps made without effort.
Then when the time comes to land there is the true explorer's zest of coming on unknown peoples like a god from a machine. "What country is this?" Will the answer come in German, Russian, or Norwegian? Paris Aéro Club members have been shot at when crossing European frontiers. Others, landing, have been taken prisoners to the burgomeister or the military governor, to languish as spies while the telegraph clicked to the far-off capital, and then to end the evening over champagne at an officers' enthusiastic mess. Still others have had to strive with the dangerous ignorance and superstition even of some remote little peasant population. These are the chances of the winds.