The first chapter of the first high-altitude distress Are we on the rise again?No, quite the opposite!We are descending!Worse than that, Mr. Smith!We are falling!God!Throw the ballast out!look!This last bag is empty!Did the balloon go up?No!I seem to hear the sound of waves crashing!Below the gondola is the sea!Not more than five hundred feet away from us!Throw out everything that weighs!everything! Such was the cry that came over the vast Pacific Ocean at four o'clock in the afternoon on March 23, 1865. The terrible storm that blew from the northeast around the spring equinox of that year is unforgettable.From the eighteenth to the twenty-sixth of March, the great storm roared without interruption.It crossed the equator obliquely from thirty-five degrees north latitude to forty degrees south latitude, and swept across eighteen hundred miles, causing serious damage to America, Europe, and Asia.Cities were blown up; trees were uprooted; dikes were destroyed by huge waves like mountains and seas, and hundreds of boats were thrown on land according to published figures alone; some places where tornadoes passed were completely flat ;thousands perished on land and at sea; such was the incrimination of the tempest which was raging madly at that time.The devastation in Havana on October 25, 1810, and in Guadeloupe on July 26, 1825, were dire, but not as great as this one.

In the midst of this catastrophe on land and sea, the same thrilling tragedy was staged in the turbulent heights. A light balloon, like a ball carried atop a column of water by a tornado, caught up in an eddy of air, swept high through the air at ninety miles an hour, as if caught in some midair whirlpool. , kept turning. A gondola was tied to the bottom of the balloon, and in it sat five persons, who could not see clearly because of the thick fog and mist that pervaded the whole ocean. Some people may ask, where did this Balloon Storm toy come from?From which corner of the earth did it rise?Of course, it will not take off when the wind is blowing.However, the storm had been blowing for five days, and there were already signs of a storm on the eighteenth.There could be no doubt that the balloon had come from a great distance, for the gales carried it at least two thousand miles a day and night.

These disoriented passengers could not calculate how many miles they had traveled since they set sail.Strangely, though they were drifting about in this howling storm, they were safe.They were thrown to and fro by the wind, and they were blown round and round, but they didn't feel that they were rolling or bumping at all. They could not see through the thick fog beneath the gondola.Dark clouds surrounded them.They couldn't tell whether it was day or night.At that time, they were suspended in the sky, and the surroundings were in darkness. They could neither see the reflection of the ground, nor hear the voices of the people on the ground, and even the surging sound of the ocean could not reach their ears.Only when they plummeted did they realize that they were in danger of being wiped out.After dropping some loads of ammunition, guns, and food, they rose to an altitude of 4,500 feet in the air.As soon as the flying people realize that there is a vast ocean below, they feel that the danger above is always less than that below, so they throw away their most useful things without hesitation. At the same time, they try their best not to let the balloon leak a little hydrogen. This kind of hydrogen is their lifeblood, which can suspend them above the ocean.

The night passed in horror (if the faint of heart would have been frightened to death).Day came again.As the day approached, the storm gradually subsided.From the early morning of March 24, the storm showed signs of weakening.At dawn, patches of light clouds rose higher.In the course of a few hours the hurricane had grown into a strong wind, that is to say, the velocity of the air flow had been reduced by half.At this time, although it was still the tight sail wind that the sailors called, the wind had weakened a lot after all. Towards eleven o'clock the air below became clearer.Already the atmosphere smelled of that dampness which often follows a thunderstorm.The storm doesn't seem to be blowing west any more.The wind has become weak.Will it be like a typhoon in the Indian Ocean, which often stops as soon as it is said, and disappears in a flash?

At this moment, however, it was evident that the balloon was slowly descending again.It seems that it is gradually deflated, the air bag is getting longer and longer, from spherical to oval.By noon the balloon was only two thousand feet above the sea.The airbag can hold 50,000 cubic feet of gas, and because of its large capacity, it can either rise very high in the air, or keep moving in a parallel direction for a long time. Sensing that they were in danger, the passengers threw away the few remaining items that could have caused the gondola to fall: a small store of provisions, everything, even the pocket knife.At this moment, a man climbed up to the ring which covered the net, and tried to fasten the lower part of the balloon still more firmly.

However, the passengers knew very well in their hearts that the hydrogen was insufficient, and the balloon could no longer maintain a higher altitude.They have no choice but to die. There is no continent beneath them, not even a small island.Just a vast ocean, with nowhere to land them, no ground to anchor. On the vast sea, there are still turbulent waves!This vast ocean, even if one looks down from a height, and the field of vision extends to a radius of forty miles, it is equally as far as the eye can see.Under the relentless whipping of the storm, the flowing plain aroused the surging waves, like ten thousand horses galloping, and the white mane is still blowing in the wind!Not an inch of land in sight, nor a lone sail in sight!At this time, the balloon must be prevented from falling further at any cost, otherwise there is a danger of being swallowed by the waves.Passengers clearly did their best in this critical moment.But, in spite of their efforts, the balloon continued to fall, moving at great speed with the northeasterly wind.

What a dreadful situation these unfortunate people are in!They are no longer the masters of the balloon.All their efforts were in vain.The air cell of the balloon is getting more and more deflated.The hydrogen gas keeps leaking out, and there is no way to block it.The speed of descent obviously became faster and faster, and at one o'clock in the afternoon, the gondola was less than six hundred feet above the surface of the ocean. Hydrogen gas was rushing out from a crack in the airbag, and it was impossible to stop it from rushing out.The contents of the gondola were dropped, and the weight was lightened, so that, for a few hours, the passengers could support themselves in the air without falling.But this is just lingering, if no land can be found before dark, then the passengers, the basket and the balloon will definitely be buried in the bottom of the sea.

At this time, they took out the last move.They are obviously brave, level-headed people.They didn't have a single complaint.They tried their best to delay the moment of landing, and they were determined to fight until the last minute.The hanging basket is just a wicker basket, which cannot float on the water, and if it falls into the sea, there is absolutely no possibility of not sinking. At two o'clock the balloon was only four hundred feet above the water.At this time, a loud voice was suddenly heard, from which it was known that this person had no thought of fear at all.The voice that answered him was equally strong.Throw everything away?No, ten thousand francs more.A heavy purse immediately fell into the sea.Did the balloon go up?It goes up a bit, but it will go down again in a while.Is there anything else to throw?there is none left.have!Diaolan!Let's grab the net rope and throw the gondola into the sea!

This was indeed the last and only way of reducing the weight of the balloon.The ropes to which the basket was attached were cut, the basket fell, and the balloon rose another two thousand feet. The five passengers climbed onto the balloon net, clung to the mesh, and gazed down into the abyss below. Everyone knows that balloons are most sensitive to changes in gravity.You can change its height even by dropping very light objects.This floating tool is like an extremely precise balance.It is not difficult to imagine that as long as it relieves a little burden, it will immediately rise sharply.This is exactly what happened at this time.But, after a while, the balloon began to descend again, and the gas ran out through the crack, which now cannot be repaired.

These guys did their best.Now manpower can no longer save them, so they have to resign themselves to their fate. At four o'clock the balloon was only five hundred feet above the sea. There was a loud bark.It turns out the pilots had a dog with them!It clings to the netting tightly against its owner. What did Top see?one said out loud.Immediately afterwards someone shouted: land!land! It turned out that the balloon had traveled several hundred miles to the southwest with the strong wind from dawn to now.There was now a fairly high landmass ahead.But the land was still thirty miles away.It would take at least an hour to get there if it kept drifting.

an hour!Will all the little gas left in the balloon run away during this hour? Here lies the seriousness of the problem!The pilots had clearly seen land, and they had to get there at any cost.They didn't know where it was, whether it was an island or a continent, because they didn't know to which corner of the globe the hurricane had blown them.But they had no choice but to go to that piece of land, no matter whether there were people there or not. At four o'clock the balloon was no longer able to hold up, and now it is even closer to the water!The huge waves licked the lower part of the net several times, making it even heavier. The balloon was like a bird with a damaged wing, trying to fly but not being able to fly high.Half an hour later, it was only a mile from land, but the balloon had exhausted its strength and hung there in rumpled folds, with some gas remaining in only the upper layer.The pilots clung to the net of the balloon tightly, but it was too heavy. Soon, they were half immersed in the sea, and the turbulent waves hit them.After a while, the air bag of the balloon becomes a pocket, and the wind blows it forward like a sail.It might reach land just like that! However, when there are only two anchor chains [Note: about one hundred and twenty fathoms, about two hundred meters. ] When they were far away, four people screamed at the same time.The balloon, which was thought to never fly again, suddenly rose unexpectedly under the blow of a huge wave.After a while, it seemed to lose some weight again, and rose to an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, where it encountered a wind, which, instead of blowing it ashore, blew it in a direction almost parallel to the land. flew away. Two minutes later, it finally slanted back again, and finally landed on a sandy beach where the waves couldn't beat it.The pilots assist each other to get out of the mesh.The balloon lost the weight of the people and was blown up again by the wind, like a wounded bird, which disappeared into the air as soon as it regained its spirit. There used to be five people and a dog in the gondola, but now there are only four people left with the balloon. The missing man must have been swept out to sea when the waves hit the net of the balloon, and it was from this that the balloon lost its weight and made its sudden ascent shortly before landing.As soon as the four men in distress had set foot on land, they realized that a companion was missing, and at once cried out with one voice that he would probably swim ashore.We need to save him!We need to save him!