The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1909-08-29

. essary to tighten the balloon should be
compelled to discharge an excessive guam
tity of ballast. This would cause to
cend to undesred attitudes from which we
should descend again with considerable
momentum. Moreover, we could not risk
throwing solid humps out of the balloon
except when water or forest, where
should be in no danger Of njurng any
one. We still possessed about 500 pounds
of ballast but in its frozen form its value
might be very little. We arranged mum
Der of articles that could in an emergency
be thrown away, and even attempted 10
haul in the trail rope, 200 yards in length
and very heavy with the idea of cutting
. it up But we found the labor too heavy.
We hauled in a portion of IL and then real
ICED that could not finish the task. We
Obliged to let it out again. Possibly
the altitude at which floating rem
dered physical labor exceptionally ardu-
we had fourteen hours of darkness be-
~ fore us in a strange country covered with
vast forests, and we were being swept
along at any pace between forty and fifty
miles hour. Large rivers and frozen
worlds record was with ordinary luck well with
in our grasp we resolved not to give up yet. Mr..
Gaudron thought could weather the night, and
that If did might, helped by the heat of the
sun which would renew the buoyancy of the bal
loon keep up for the greater part of the following
day and do a very great distance. At the same
time. he warned us that in the event of a further
fall Of snow. or any other unforeseen cause, we
might have to descend in the dark, operation
that would be attended by danger
Balloon is fired upon.
A s DARKNESS approached we came down to a low
I a level so that Mr. Gaudron hailed some
people. "Yee lee Russki eelee Populski?" he
called els this Russia Poland?D. Promptly
the answer 'Douruck!"
That" said Gaudron turning 10 us and laugh
ing heartily. means FOolI &"
We heard drum beating Was it to brighten
away? Two shots fred. We could not
tell whether they fired at us. although
have since learned that here a balloon
fired at and struck a few days later.
With the darkness the again-the
towards the ground, so that early in the night
had to lose bag of frozen ballast, which fell with
deep thud in the desolate woods. The
dealing with us in summary fashion. To pre-
vent crashing into the trees another bag had TO
go This had the desired effect. but the operation
could, with loose ballast, have been accomplished
at little than half the cost. If we could
have checked the downward movement early by
throwing out little ballast. the momentum of the
balloon would not have been great The sec
ond bag of ballast probably not necessary for
regaining equilibrium; yet ii had TO be sacrificed
In brief glimpse of the trees we could see
that speed terrific
AS we expected the loss of the two bags of bal
last sent aoft rapidly In a very few minutes
the rotary and ascending movement of the balloon
caused a continual draught Of cold air carrying
with it,
We huddled up in cor.
-. ners, keeping electric lamp
-assss-.s.-z--e- ready for reading the aneroid
@--s===@-- the glass of which coated
sSs--Ss-z@z with ice which had frequently
y@---S=s77-SN to be rubbed off.
SzS1I1-eSt EsEgE Steadily climbed TO 1000
4 feet aaph