The Twenty-One Balloons PMC

by William Pene du Bois

  There were no further incidents to spoil the Professor’s celebration. The following morning, there were still nine hundred and twenty-nine of the original thousand miniature balloons. A huge crowd gathered early along each side of the avenue of triumph. The Mayor gave final instructions to the official welcoming committee. He asked them to wear derby hats instead of the usual silk hats; and polka-dot ties, instead of the usual gray ascots. “This,” the Mayor explained, “is so as to be in keeping with the balloon motif.”

  At exactly 2:56 o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd of September the Presidential train was sighted in the distance and a gigantic cheer of welcome was heard from the people of San Francisco.

  III

  A Description of the Globe

  THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAIN ANSWERED THE CHEER OF welcome given it by the people of San Francisco with a long piercing toot. Then, pulling up at the station, it slowed down to a stop, panting and letting off steam as would any engine that had just completed a cross-country run. The Police Department had detailed one hundred officers to keep the station platform clear. These policemen interlocked their arms, forming a human chain which held the eager crowds back. The Presidential train was shorter than usual for greater speed and was made up only of an engine, coal tender, dining car, and the President’s own car with the familiar observation and speech platform at the rear. The Mayor had the carriage, which was to take Professor Sherman to the Western American Explorers’ Club, pull up opposite the Presidential coach, clapped his white gloved hands twice, and instantly two porters appeared with a red carpet strip which was rolled up like a huge jellyroll. He clapped his hands again and the red carpet was rolled across the station platform from the Professor’s carriage to the President’s coach. He clapped his hands again and the official welcoming committee lined up on both sides of the carpet strip, wearing their smart bowlers and polka-dot ties. The Mayor then reached in his vest pocket, and took from there a small silver whistle which he tooted once. He replaced the whistle, then followed by the Chief Surgeon of the San Francisco General Hospital, he walked up the red carpet into the Presidential train. The whistle toot was evidently the cue to start the music by the combined Fire and Police Department bands, for instantly lovely strains of music were heard. As Professor Sherman, looking rather haggard and worn, descended from the train onto the red-carpeted platform with the Mayor holding him up on one side and the Chief Surgeon holding him up on the other, a medley of three appropriate songs was heard, mingled with the tremendous cheers from the crowd. These three songs, selected by the Mayor himself, were, Oh When I Walk, I Always Walk with Billy; Billy Boy; and Marching Through Georgia. It was thought afterwards by many that the slim connection between that last song and Professor William Sherman was a bit far-fetched.

  Professor Sherman was assisted into the back seat of the carriage and the Mayor climbed in and sat beside him. The Chief Surgeon, acting as a sort of official footman, sat next to the coachman while, instead of lackeys, two trained nurses sat on the raised seats behind and overlooking the Professor. The carriage proceeded up the triumphant avenue from the station to the Explorers’ Club through thunderous cheers and showers of confetti. Just as the carriage pulled up in front of the Club, a sweet-looking well-scrubbed little girl in a crisp white starched dress, an orphan from St. Catherine’s Waif Home, rushed up to the Professor, curtsied politely, and presented him with a little bouquet of toy balloons. The Professor accepted the bouquet, thanked the little girl, and, as the crowd sighed its approval, kissed her on both cheeks. He was then helped out of the carriage, helped up the stairs into the Club, up the aisle which parted the packed auditorium in the middle, onto the speaker’s platform where a freshly made bed awaited him. The Professor sat on the bed as the Chief Surgeon removed his shoes. He then swung his feet around up on the bed as the Chief Surgeon covered his lap with a comforter. Then, facing the audience, propped up in bed by one bolster and four huge pillows, Professor William Waterman Sherman was ready to tell his story.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honor to present Professor Sherman,” announced the Mayor.

  “Mr. Mayor, Fellow Explorers, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Professor Sherman. A hush fell over the audience. There was a small creaking sound of people getting themselves comfortably set, and then silence. “I am happy to be home again!”

  At this, the audience rocked the building with cheers. The hubbub lasted four minutes before the crowd settled down again.

  “I haven’t been away very long, but I have certainly missed ... ”

  The audience, reminded by this remark that the Professor had clipped forty days off the speed record for a trip around the world, broke out in tumultuous applause. This time it lasted five full minutes. The Professor looked helplessly at the Mayor who immediately sensed how he felt. He faced the audience, silenced it, and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Professor Sherman has a long and, we feel sure, interesting story to tell. He hasn’t had a chance to say twenty words yet, and you have already interrupted him with ten minutes of applause. The Professor isn’t running for President, he is recounting a scientific adventure to a scientific club. Kindly refrain from applauding hereafter until the Professor has concluded his story, thereby respecting the Professor’s story and his ill health. Thank you.”

  The crowd responded to this by being absolutely quiet. Professor Sherman turned to the Mayor, thanked him with a nod, and started again:

  It is funny that my trip has ended by being such a fast trip around the world. I find myself referred to now as one of the speediest travelers of all times. Speed wasn’t at all what I had in mind when I started out. On the contrary, if all had gone the way I had hoped, I would still be happily floating around in my balloon, drifting anywhere the wind cared to carry me—East, West, North, or South. It just happened, by some strange fate, that the wind blew me three-quarters around the world at tremendous speed, and my only moments of rest were once when I crashed in the Pacific, and again after a crash in the Atlantic. The other reason why I took this trip was that I wanted to be alone, detached from the earth, in a balloon. But this didn’t work out either. My trip wasn’t half over when I found myself in a balloon contraption with eighty other people, men, women, and children.

  For years I had cherished the idea of this trip. As you know, I was a teacher of arithmetic for forty years. Forty years of being surrounded by a classroom of healthy prankish students. Forty years of spitballs. Forty years of glue on my seat, Sal Hepatica in my inkwell, and other devilish tricks. Long about the thirty-sixth year, I started yearning to be alone. I amused myself with thinking of many ways of doing this, trips in small boats, Polar expeditions; I joined this Explorers’ Club, for after all it seemed to me that the ambition of explorers was to go where no one had gone before. One day I started thinking of a balloon in which I could float around out of everybody’s reach. This was the main idea behind my trip: to be where no one would bother me for perhaps one full year; away from all such boring things in the lives of teachers as daily schedules, having to be in different classrooms at exact times week after week.

  I planned and worked on designs for my balloon in my spare time, using the experiments of other balloonists as a guide. I wanted a big balloon, one which could keep me in the air for a year, or at least many months. Big balloons are a problem. Unless they are designed with great care they are ripped to shreds by the wind while they are being inflated. Once a balloon is in the air, it offers little resistance to the wind and isn’t bothered by it; but while it is tied down on the ground and being filled up with hydrogen it is at the wind’s mercy. I followed the plans of the great French balloonist, Giffard, whose captive balloon, the Clou, is the biggest balloon ever built. His balloon was constructed of seven alternating thicknesses of rubber and silk. I planned my balloon, which I christened the Globe, with four alternating thicknesses of rubber and silk. My balloon was six thousand cubic yards in size, which is just about ten times the size of a standard balloon. The Glob
e was one of the biggest free balloons ever built.

  I wanted a big balloon for two reasons. First of all, as I have already said, to keep me in the air for a long time. My second reason was that I wanted a big basket to live in and it would take a huge balloon to lift the basket I had in mind. As you know, the standard balloon basket is just a little compartment about big enough for two men to stand in, or one man to sit down in, and altogether impossible to sleep in. There is little room for provisions and it would be impossible to live in a standard balloon basket for any length of time. This goes without saying. I looked to the work of another French balloonist named Nadar. Nadar built himself a big balloon which he christened Géant and attached to this a real little basket house. It had a door, windows, a staircase which led up to its little roof. The roof of the house was bordered by a woven balustrade, furnished with wicker furniture, and was an ideal observation platform. The inside of the house was appropriately and comfortably furnished. This was a basketweaver’s masterpiece. It was light, strong, and comfortable. I designed my basket house in much the same manner with but few changes. I didn’t use the roof of my woven house as an observation platform but rather as a sort of open-air attic in which to store food. For observation, there was a small porch all the way around my house with light uprights and balustrade made of bamboo. This porch was quite like the deck of a ship.

  Nadar’s balloon wasn’t built, as mine was, with the idea of taking very long trips or staying in the air many months.

  He therefore didn’t have to worry much about ballast. The way you take an ordinary trip in a balloon is quite simple. The balloon is tied down with several ropes while it is being filled with gas. When it is full, you give the command to cut the ropes and you fly off. The balloon will instantly leap into the air and carry you high up in the sky, the height depending on the amount of gas in the balloon and the amount of weight you are carrying. When you want to come down, you pull a rope which lets some of the gas out of the bag. If you want to climb higher, you must throw something overboard which will make the balloon lighter. Nadar carried bags of sand which he threw overboard when he wanted to gain altitude. Sand is the usual ballast used by all balloonists. I couldn’t afford to use sand as ballast because in order to stay up in the air and live comfortably for a long period of time, I had to make every ounce I carried with me count. I used food for ballast. I thought this to be ideal for a long trip. With food for ballast, every time I threw a pail of garbage overboard, I would go a little higher. Thus for every unnecessary sandbag, I could carry extra food to make my trip last longer.

  My balloon house was furnished with the lightest of everything. The usual mattress is too heavy and is only used at night anyway. I designed a mattress made of the same material as my balloon and filled with gas. With a sheet over it, it stayed on the floor and was most soft and comfortable. When I pulled the sheet off, it floated up to the ceiling and was thus stored out of my way in the daytime. I had chairs and a table made of balsa wood and bamboo. I had a library of paper-bound books printed in small type. My foods and liquids were chosen with the idea of saving weight. I carried a strong shark-fishing rod with the hope of catching a few fish to increase my food supply.

  Some balloonists who recently planned ocean voyages, such as the Americans John Wise and T. C. Lowe, attached lifeboats to their balloons in case of a crash in the water. I couldn’t see carrying this extra weight. I had a tailor make me two waterproof suits out of balloon cloth and carried a cork lifesaver. If I crashed, I figured that this type of suit would keep me dry, and the lifesaver would keep me above water. These suits were wonderful. They were light, and being both waterproof and airtight, were extremely warm. I planned to wear one and wash the other by attaching it to my shark-fishing rod and dunking it in the ocean. All of my laundry was done in this manner. The rest of my clothes were simply the lighter variety of everyday men’s wear.

  The Higgins Balloon Factory took a year to build my balloon, and I must say they made a fine job of it. It was finished August 10th of this year. I had one excellent trial flight in my balloon which I thought was enough. It was a short flight and everything worked perfectly. The only mishap was that I broke every plate and glass in my woven house when I came down a little too fast. I corrected this by having silver plates made to replace dishes, and used a silver cup instead of glasses. The plates and cup had small handles on them so that I could tie them onto my fishing rod and wash them by dunking them in the ocean.

  I spent two days in outfitting my balloon with the proper provisions. I carried a small still for making fresh water out of salt water, and a medium sized keg of quinine tonic. I was soon all set for my trip.

  Higgins notified the press that I had intentions of taking a long trip in a giant balloon which might easily end up in my being the first to fly across the Pacific Ocean. The newspapers carried the story, giving it about half a column on the fourth page. The public wasn’t at all interested in my trip then. I think it was because Higgins told the newspapermen that my balloon wasn’t quite as big as Nadar’s. The public had heard of Nadar’s giant balloon and, I’m sure, would have been curious to see it. But mine, which was just a shade smaller, was looked upon as just a runner-up.

  As I sailed away August 15th at two o‘clock in the afternoon, I was amused to see that only four of my closest friends were on hand to see me off. I told them I would be up for a year. Well, that’s the way I had planned it then. I waved goodbye and gave the command to “Let ’er go!”

  IV

  The Unwelcome Passenger

  WHEN RELEASED, MY BALLOON instantly and gracefully rose to a height of sixteen hundred feet, and kept this altitude as a swift wind carried me out over San Francisco and over the Pacific Ocean. Before taking off, I had lain down on my balloon mattress on the floor of my basket house and held tightly to two handles attached to the floor to bolster myself against the shock of a quick ascension. The first jolt was quite a large one, but as soon as the Globe reached its cruising altitude, which seemed to take only a minute or two, my flying basket house was as calm and easy to move around in as if it were on the ground. I swallowed several times to clear my ears because they felt stuffed up while the balloon was climbing fast. I got up off my mattress, straightened some books which had fallen from their shelves, and walked out on my porch to have a last look at San Francisco. It was a clear sunny afternoon, and I must say the city beneath me looked most beautiful. I noticed quite a few people looking up at me. Evidently the actual sight of my giant balloon and basket house was considerably more exciting to see than pictured in the newspaper stories. I even noticed crowds of people running down the streets in the same direction that I was flying, so absorbed at looking up at me that they kept bumping into other people at street intersections. There was considerable confusion and even what appeared to me to be a street fight. This was most flattering.

  In less than ten minutes, I was out over water and watching the coastline disappear from view. Several sea gulls were following the Globe as it flew off over the Pacific. Some of them rested occasionally on the balustrade around my porch, making my balloon descend a little; some of them rested on the silken surfaces of the balloon itself, which gave me some cause to worry. I knew the cloth, which was specially prepared and made to withstand tremendous punishment of all kinds, wouldn’t be damaged by the gulls. But the sight of the birds, their sharp claws extended, coming in for a fast landing on my huge balloon, scared me to death.

  Mariners have often told me that they consider sea gulls to be good luck and always feed them by throwing garbage overboard. I didn’t have any garbage at that early stage of my trip and couldn’t afford to spare any of my precious food for feeding birds so I had to risk misfortune and let the gulls go hungry.

  My balloon house was nice to travel in, for except at noontime, when the sun was directly overhead, there was always one side of the porch where I could sit in the warm sun. I did a great deal of reading. Seated in a comfortable chair, my feet p
ropped up on the balustrade—this was a truly enjoyable mode of life.

  (At this last remark of Professor Sherman’s, the other explorers in the well-behaved audience couldn’t restrain a deeply felt sigh.)

  I saved all of my garbage for the first three days, storing it up front where the wind would carry its odor off ahead of the balloon. On the morning of the fourth day, I must say the odor from this garbage was becoming quite unbearable. The wind, of course, is always behind you when you fly a balloon; and since the wind travels faster than the balloon, due to the friction present when such a massive body moves through the atmosphere, it carries all odors forward. However, the odors from my garbage had become so persistent by the fourth day, that I was finding myself to be constantly flying through my own smells, as it were—a most disagreeable state of affairs. But then something truly wonderful happened. Rain clouds formed directly above me, that morning of the fourth day, and it began to rain and the wind blew the rain against my wicker house making things generally unpleasant. This was excuse enough to unload my food ballast. Holding my nose with one hand, I walked up front and dumped all of the garbage over the side. The Globe instantly bounded up through the rain clouds, into the sun again, and I continued on in fresh air and sunshine. As I looked down at the rain clouds and took deep breaths of fresh air, I felt that I had indeed mastered the elements to a most satisfactory degree.

  Night time in my balloon house was particularly enjoyable. The gentle motion of the balloon and my soft inflated mattress made a combination for perfect sleeping. I spent the early evening on my porch in solitary contentment, studying the stars. I think I can honestly say that my few days flying over the Pacific in the Globe were the happiest days of my life.