“how fearful
and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
... i’ll look no more
lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
topple down headlong!”
shakspeare.
“oh, how delightful!” was the first exclamation of mabel, as the eaglet shot upwards, swiftly, but with a motion so smooth that its speed was only made known by the earth and the spectators appearing to sink down—down—ever growing less and less, while the cheers sounded fainter and fainter, as rising up from a distance. “how delightful!” she repeated, waving a little flag as her farewell to those below.
but when the smiling mabel turned to look at her companions, she was somewhat startled to mark that the countenance of her uncle was of the same ashen hue as that of the earl.
“how is it that mr. verdon is not with us?” exclaimed mabel in some surprise.
augustine silenced her by a warning look. his grasp on the arm of dashleigh had grown heavier[194] and tighter; but for that grasp it is possible that the nobleman, in the first excitement of fear, would have flung himself out of the car. augustine’s first thought was for his companion, for he felt that the unhappy dashleigh was trembling convulsively under his hand.
“well, my friends,” said he, in a tone so cheerful that it completely deceived his niece; “verdon will think it a shame if we do not go back for him directly; i propose, therefore, that we descend.”
“yes, descend!” cried dashleigh wildly; and a strange faint echo from the far earth repeated the word, “descend!”
augustine was almost afraid to loosen his hold on the arm of the earl; it was, however, necessary that he should try some means of bringing the eaglet to the ground. he was, of course, aware that this means must be to let out the gas which inflated the ball, but ignorant as he was of the practical working of a balloon, however easily he might grasp its theory, augustine was left to guess the way in which this effect might be produced. mabel, who had perfect confidence in the power of her gifted uncle to master any difficulty, and who saw no change in his countenance except the paleness which overspread his handsome features, had no idea of the anxious fear which now perplexed his mind.
augustine laid hold of a rope which seemed to him to be the one most probably attached to the[195] valve at the top of the ball, and in this his reason had not misled him. the valve was constructed to open inwardly, so that the pressure of the gas within might keep it constantly closed, except when mechanical means were applied to counteract that pressure. but mr. verdon’s misgiving had not been without foundation; there was some hitch with the valve which prevented its working properly under an inexperienced hand. as augustine pulled the rope, the balloon entered into a cloud, and the travellers suddenly found themselves enveloped in a dense, damp, chilly mist.
“are we ascending or descending?” asked mabel, “for the balloon is so steady that it does not seem to be moving at all.”
her uncle, who, with far greater anxiety, had been asking himself the same question, replied in a voice still perfectly calm, “throw down some pieces of paper, and we shall ascertain that fact directly.”
wondering that he should not know it without having recourse to experiment, mabel immediately obeyed. “the bits seem to fall, not like paper, but like lead!” she exclaimed.
“then we must be ascending rapidly still,” muttered augustine; and he pulled the rope with such desperate force that it snapped in his hand, and all communication with the all-important valve was broken off for ever.
“god have mercy upon us!” was augustine’s[196] instinctive prayer, not uttered aloud from the fear of alarming his companions. the thick mist prevented mabel from having any clear idea of what her uncle was doing, but she thought him strangely silent, and a damping chill came over her young spirit like the fog which enwrapped her form. augustine looked up almost in despair at the huge indistinct mass looming as a dark cloud above him. oh! that there were but any means of tearing open a passage for the gas! the wicker car, suspended by ropes, hung too low beneath the ball for it to be possible for aumerle’s extended arm to reach the silken globe, or his penknife would have at once offered an easy solution of the difficulty. a light, agile sea-boy might possibly have climbed one of the ropes, and so have reached the inflated ball; but the brain of augustine turned dizzy at the very thought of attempting to clamber at the awful height to which he knew that he must now have attained. his frame was remarkable for strength as well as for manly beauty, but was altogether unfitted for a perilous feat like this. to have attempted it must have been inevitably to fall and perish.
suddenly, to mabel’s relief, the balloon emerged from its misty shroud, and burst again into the brightness of day. the scene was one never to be forgotten, but mabel was the only one of the travellers whose mind was sufficiently at ease to enjoy its sublime and awful beauty.
[197]
above was the sky—deeply, intensely blue, such as in italy meets the enchanted gaze. below was a floor of pure white cloud, spread out, as it appeared to mabel, like a vast sea of cotton, on which lay piled here and there vast masses, or islands of snow. some of these masses were floating beneath them with a slow and majestic motion, impelled by currents of wind which did not reach the strata of air to which the balloon had ascended. presently the white floor seemed gradually to part on either side, and an opening appeared through which a strange panoramic view of the earth burst on the wondering eye. it lay—oh! how far beneath! there was no distinction of mountain or plain, a dim blue hue tinted all. in the words of a former ?ronaut,—“the whole appeared a perfect plain, the highest building having no apparent height, but reduced all to the same level, and the whole terrestrial prospect seemed like a coloured map.” there lay dashleigh hall, the seat of ancestral pride, shrunk to the appearance of a tiny toy,—a mere nothing viewed from that awful height, even as all earth’s pomps and grandeur must appear to those who survey them from heaven. for the first time since he had worn his honours, dashleigh felt them no cause for pride. he was in his own eyes no peer, no lofty aristocrat, but a poor, weak child of man, with every nerve unstrung, and an undefined horror hanging over him. gladly would he then have exchanged places with[198] the poorest peasant standing on solid ground, though not possessing a single foot of it.
“look upwards—upwards—not downwards!” cried augustine, alarmed at the wild expression on the haggard face of his friend. “lie down, dashleigh, at the bottom of the car, and fix your gaze on the sky above!”
“uncle!” exclaimed mabel, “how strange your voice sounds—like what one might hear in a dream; and my own, too, seems quite different from what it was when we were on the ground.”
“this is the effect of the rarified air upon the ear.”
“uncle, the objects below us grow smaller and smaller, we must be rising higher and higher; i thought that you meant to descend.”
augustine’s only reply was a look which in an instant, as by a lightning flash, revealed to the young girl the full danger of their situation.
“you cannot descend!” she gasped forth, clasping her hands in terror.
“remember him,” said augustine in a very low voice; “if he knew our helpless condition, i believe that it would turn his brain.”
“but cannot you tell how to let out the gas?”
“i cannot—”
“you who know everything—”
“i do not know this.”
mabel sank back upon the seat from which she[199] had half risen while addressing her uncle, who, holding firmly by a rope, was standing upright in the car. she was a brave girl, and acted as such; she neither uttered cry nor shed tear, but she turned very pale and cold, and shivered as if mantled in ice. it gave her now a sickening oppression to gaze below. was she never, never to return to that earth which lay beneath her—never again to be pressed to her father’s heart—never to meet the smile of her sister! was she to float on in these dreary regions never before visited by man, buoyed up in a moving coffin, till—
the awful, deathlike stillness was suddenly broken by a sharp report, sounding to the startled ears of the travellers something like that of a pistol! it was but a cork in the refreshment basket going off from the diminished pressure of the atmosphere causing the wine in the bottle to expand, but the explosion of a cannon could hardly have produced a more startling effect than a noise so sudden and so unexpected. dashleigh sprang like a maniac from the bottom of the car, in which he had been quietly lying, and made a frantic attempt to throw himself out of the car. augustine had to struggle and wrestle to keep him down, as one engaged in a contest for life; and the eaglet, at the same time, passing into a violent current of air, rocked and shook, and swung to such an extent, that mabel had to grasp tight hold of the wicker-work to prevent[200] herself from being flung down into the clouds which again had closed beneath them.
the whirlwind grew yet more tremendous, tossing to and fro the enormous balloon as if it had been a bubble on the current, actually turning it round and round, and making the car describe a wide swinging circuit below it.
it was a very awful moment—a moment in which the heart almost ceases to beat, and the only utterance of the soul can be a cry to the god that made it! it seemed as in answer to that instinctive prayer to the ear that is never closed, that the whirlwind soon appeared to lessen its violence, the motion of the balloon abated, the frightful swinging of the car ceased, and augustine uttered a faint “thank god!” while dashleigh sank senseless at his feet!
