A small boy has an exciting, terrifying, and wonderful adventure in an era when flying was still new.More than forty years ago, there was a newsboy who had a wonderful experience. But if the man—who was the boy then—is still living, he does not, I am sure he could not, ever forget even for an hour the wonderful, terrible experience that was his when, he was carried through the air, hundreds of feet above the earth's surface, an unwilling aeronaut.
It happened during California's early days, when amusements for the people were few. A balloon ascension was enough to attract crowds from far and near. So, when flaming placards announced the ascension of a balloon from Oakland, a suburb of San Francisco, across the bay, thousands made ready to witness it. The promoters of the affair had arranged to charter for the day the ferry-boats plying between the two places; and in the day's increased passenger-traffic—which might reasonably be expected to be enormous—they counted upon a profit sufficient to insure success in the undertaking.
The day dawned beautifully clear—a perfect, flawless, midsummer California day.
By eight o'clock the tide of sightseers was flowing into Oakland; by ten a great crowd of eager, waiting people was assembled there. At noon the crowd had become a multitude.
There were men in ranchmen's dress, men dressed as miners, men from "the city," men that were vaqueros, or cattle-men employed on the ranches, women and children, and the Spanish Dons and their families. And there, fastened at its moorings, amid the crowd, was the balloon in which a professional aeronaut was to make the ascension. The crowds thronged about, examining it with curiosity; the men talking and smoking, the women moving about under the live-oaks with their children dragging at their skirts and eating peanuts.
The hour for the ascension came and passed. There was a delay in getting the great balloon in order. People became impatient. There was, it seemed, not enough gas to bear up the weight of the basket and the aeronaut. Experiments were tried while the restless spectators grumbled at the delay.
A man of lighter weight took the place of the professional aeronaut. Still the balloon refused to lift the basket so heavily laden.
Mutterings were heard from the dissatisfied people. They began to declare it all a mere scheme to attract great crowds over from San Francisco for the sake of the ferry-ticket returns. There would be no ascension, they said—the whole thing was a fraud to extract money from the people.
The aeronaut and his assistants became angry at these speeches, and finally cut the basket loose, and cast it aside. At once the balloon struggled to bound into space. Then, in the suspended hoop, only three or four feet in diameter, the aeronaut seated himself.
The balloon, though it tugged at the guy ropes, showed there was still too great a weight. The aeronaut got out in despair. How much weight would the balloon carry? He looked for some one lighter than himself. A slim, half grown youth took his place. That was better; but even he was not light enough. Looking around for some one still lighter, the aeronaut saw a barefooted newsboy, wearing only a thin cotton shirt, a pair of trousers reaching to the knee, and a broken straw hat.
"Here, Bub," said he, "quick! Sit in this hoop a minute, will you, and let me see if the balloon will raise your weight?"
The little fellow laid down his bundle of papers, placing beside them a basket of peanuts that he carried. Then he seated himself on the slender curving ring. Steadying himself within the frail circle by holding with both hands to the two sides, he sat there with his legs dangling below him, feeling quite important in being chosen. He was sure the other boys were envying him even this approach to an ascent in a balloon.
Yes; there was sufficient gas to hold up the boy's weight. That was something; but it would not yet bear the weight of a man. Something must be done. An ascent must be made to satisfy the grumbling crowd. Some alterations must be made so that the aeronaut himself could go up as he had advertised.
They loosened some of the ropes as he directed, and then—
No one ever seemed to know how it happened, but with a bound the balloon somehow wrested itself from its moorings, and shot upward, bearing aloft the barefooted little newsboy, sitting in the swinging hoop!
There was a great cry went up from the people; and then followed the silence that comes of horror. Fifty feet!— a hundred!— five hundred!— already a thousand feet above their heads he was, yet speeding helplessly upward into that vast empty space where none could reach him to lend aid!
Would he fall? Would he faint? Women clutched their own children as they saw the little lad swept skyward; and there were men who covered their eyes, not daring to look lest they should see the little figure fall.
His white shirt showed as a glimmering speck in the summer sky, as the balloon soared to greater heights. Higher, still higher, farther and farther away, he was borne by the winds coming in from the sea, toward the Coast Range of mountains.
Vaqueros and ranchmen who had ridden in from the hills to witness the ascent now sprang to their saddles and followed as fast as their horses could run, in a mad race with the balloon, as if they might perchance be near to help the little waif.
When the first sense of the terrible situation had come to those who gazed horror-stricken at the boy, the multitude became a mob, and many turned in excited wrath to seek the men who had planned the ascension, as though to wreak vengeance on them for the unexpected accident. They were gone; they had not dared to stay and brave the consequences if the boy was killed. If—! Was there a chance that he might escape-? Who could hope?
The crowd stood watching till the tiny speck went out of sight behind the clouds. Then they went home. How long could the poor little waif cling to the ring?
When the balloon took the first great leap skyward, as the stay-lines loosed their hold, the boy hardly knew what had happened. Then, seeing the fast increasing distance between himself and the upturned faces, there came over him a fear—as yet but a child's fear—of his strange situation, without a full understanding of it.
He heard the shouts of the people as he sped upward. He knew that the balloon had escaped their hold; still, it was a moment or two ere he grasped the full meaning of the accident — before he was overwhelmed by the knowledge that he had been snatched away from the earth, and was being rapidly borne toward the cloud heights—alone!
Then he knew there was neither help nor escape. He was in mid-air on a narrow strip of wood, with only his two little slim hands to hold him back from the down ward plunge into eternity.
Earthly sounds came dully to his ears as he rose. Faint and far away were they; fainter and fainter they grew till, at last, they had ceased altogether. The uplifted faces of the people, among whom he had been but a moment before, appeared now to him no larger than the silver coins they had paid him that morning for peanuts. Finally, he could not see their faces at all; the people themselves were but tiny objects growing smaller—smaller, as they moved about, till they disappeared altogether. The cattle in the fields, the horses about the town, first seemed no larger than dogs; then small as kittens; then like little mice; then as ants; and at last disappeared from his vision. Houses diminished to groups of chips and blocks, to be distinguished only by their color from the trees that no longer seemed trees, but mere bits of moss growing close to the ground. High hills flattened down to wide uneven plains; and mountains became mole-hills.
The ocean! He had never seen it like this before; nor the bay, nor the river that, like a silver ribbon, wound oceanward.
Once he tried shutting his eyes as he noted how fast—how very fast—the earth was slipping away from his sight; but it made him all the more afraid and dizzy, and he quickly opened them again.
Oh, he was so, so far away from everybody and everything! By and by he could see nothing earthward—nothing. All was too far away. He was alone in the clouds,—drifting—drifting, he knew not where. And it was so desolate there—so very lonely!
He had from the first instinctively clutched with all his small might at the sides of the hoop. In that grip, he knew, lay his only salvation. What would his mother—alone at home—think when night came and he did not as usual return, with the money earned from selling peanuts and papers ? He wished there was some way in which he could let her know he was alive, so that she would n't worry. She would hear of what had happened, and be sure he had been killed. If he could only see her for a minute! If—! His lips quivered, but he did not cry. He dreaded to hear the sound of his own voice up there in the solitude of that vast, awful, empty space.
There he clung, stunned by fear, while, journeying with the clouds, the balloon crossed over valleys and streams, over hills and forests. He could see nothing earthward save clouds; but he was sure he was drifting farther and farther away from the spot which had been home.
Then the sun went down, and the twilight crept up to him from below; and with the setting of the sun, fog-banks came tumbling in from the sea, crossing the bay and hurrying toward him with their wet chilliness. He had shivered ever since he had reached the cloud heights; now he was becoming numbed with the cold. His hands and legs ached painfully from the night's chill touch. Bareheaded, barefooted, and with only the thin little shirt over his shoulders, he was carried along northward through the gathering darkness. Fog clouds shut out all beneath him—just the great sky overhead.
By and by the stars came out. Night was all around him.
He knew the earth was far, very far below;—that he was miles high in the air. Yet, somehow, the stars, as he looked aloft, seemed just as far away as ever. He was terribly lonely; and his body ached so! Ached from cold and exposure; ached because of so long sitting in the same tense position.
It became darker—very dark, after a while. And for a long time he was conscious of nothing but his sufferings. Even his peril was forgotten.
Suddenly he became aware (he could not tell how) that the balloon was beginning to sink earthward. Yes; he could feel the rush of air through which he was dropping down to dear Mother Earth again! Slowly, but surely floating down. What would happen when he reached there? He could not rightly guess. He hoped the balloon would not fall with him into the water. But he was afraid it might; for there seemed to be so much more water on the earth's surface than he had supposed.
Dropping down— down— down, he waited while the minutes went by, to meet what might be coming. At last he thought (no, he must be mistaken; it could n't be!)—he thought he saw lights, here and there, beneath him. Straining his eyes, he looked again. Yes, lights! There were lights! That meant people were not far away. Lights gleaming from the windows of scattered ranch houses! He began to tremble so from excitement that he could hardly keep his hold on the hoop. He began to sob; and for the first time,tears flowed down his cheeks. He was getting close to earth once more!
It was densely dark; but presently he felt—rather than saw—his nearness to earth; and in a minute more the balloon struck against an oak-tree, dragging him along through the rough branches.
As he crashed into it, his hands were wrenched loose and he fell. The balloon, lightened once more of its weight, shot upward and was gone.
The little hero found himself on the ground scratched, bruised, and bleeding, but with no bones broken, nor suffering any serious hurt.
On solid earth once more!
Only they who have had an experience as terrifying can ever know how much that knowledge meant to him. Stumbling along in the dark he made his way across the fields to a distant light. It proved to be a ranch house. And there the bruised and bleeding buy was made welcome, although the strange story that he told found little belief. When morning came he was put on board a steamboat at Benicia (that being the nearest town to the ranch where he had fallen), and was taken to San Francisco.
The welcome he received from his nearly distracted mother can be imagined.
His experience was a nine-days' wonder; and column after column of the daily papers was filled with it. He was "interviewed"; he was lionized; he was allowed to keep the entire profits of all the papers he could sell containing the account of his wonderful aerial voyage.
The widow and her son, whose poverty had been extreme but a fortnight before, were now made comfortable by gifts as varied as they were numerous; but it is to be doubted if the little balloonist could ever be induced to risk another voyage in the air.
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