'What are we to expect from the child which has just been
born?' Franklin had said. But the child was born alive! It need not
have been strangled!"
The unknown hid his forehead in his hands, reflected for a few moments,
then, without raising his head, said to me:
"Notwithstanding my orders, you have opened the upper valve!"
I let go the cord.
"Fortunately" continued he, "we have still two hundred pounds of
ballast."
"What are your plans?" said I, with effort.
"You have never crossed the sea?"
I grew frightfully pale, terror froze my veins.
"It is a pity," said he, "that we are being wafted towards the Adriatic!
That is only a streamlet. Higher! we shall find other currents!"
And without looking at me, he lightened the balloon by several bags of
sand.
"I allowed you to open the valve, because the dilatation of the gas
threatened to burst the balloon. But do not do it again."
I was stupified.
"You know the voyage from Dover to Calais made by Blanchard and
Jefferies. It was rich in incident. On the 7th of January, 1785, in a
northeast wind, their balloon was filled with gas on the Dover side;
scarcely had they risen, when an error in equilibrium compelled them to
threw out their ballast, retaining only thirty pounds. The wind drifted
them slowly along towards the shores of France. The permeability of the
tissue gradually suffered the gas to escape, and at the expiration of an
hour and a half, the voyagers perceived that they were descending.
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