Viscount Roger ceased speaking; his audience was laughing.
Then somebody said: “Bah! That is
the story of all conversions in extremis.”
On the morning of July 8th I received the following
telegram: “Fine day. Always my predictions.
Belgian frontier. Baggage and servants left at
noon at the social session. Beginning of manoeuvres
at three. So I will wait for you at the works
from five o’clock on. Jovis.”
At five o’clock sharp I entered the gas works
of La Villette. It might have been mistaken for
the colossal ruins of an old town inhabited by Cyclops.
There were immense dark avenues separating heavy gasometers
standing one behind another, like monstrous columns,
unequally high and, undoubtedly, in the past the supports
of some tremendous, some fearful iron edifice.
The balloon was lying in the courtyard and had the
appearance of a cake made of yellow cloth, flattened
on the ground under a rope. That is called placing
a balloon in a sweep-net, and, in fact, it appeared
like an enormous fish.
Two or three hundred people were looking at it, sitting
or standing, and some were examining the basket, a
nice little square basket for a human cargo, bearing
on its side in gold letters on a mahogany plate the
words: Le Horla.
Suddenly the people began to stand back, for the gas
was beginning to enter into the balloon through a
long tube of yellow cloth, which lay on the soil,
swelling and undulating like an enormous worm.
But another thought, another picture occurs to every
mind. It is thus that nature itself nourishes
beings until their birth. The creature that will
rise soon begins to move, and the attendants of Captain
Jovis, as Le Horla grew larger, spread and put in
place the net which covers it, so that the pressure
will be regular and equally distributed at every point.
The operation is very delicate and very important,
for the resistance of the cotton cloth of which the
balloon is made is figured not in proportion to the
contact surface of this cloth with the net, but in
proportion to the links of the basket.
Le Horla, moreover, has been designed by M. Mallet,
constructed under his own eyes and made by himself.
Everything had been made in the shops of M. Jovis
by his own working staff and nothing was made outside.
We must add that everything was new in this balloon,
from the varnish to the valve, those two essential
parts of a balloon. Both must render the cloth
gas-proof, as the sides of a ship are waterproof.
The old varnishes, made with a base of linseed oil,
sometimes fermented and thus burned the cloth, which
in a short time would tear like a piece of paper.
The valves were apt to close imperfectly after being
opened and when the covering called “cataplasme”
was injured. The fall of M. L’Hoste in the
open sea during the night proved the imperfection of
the old system.
