s in process of inflation under a
gentle wind that threatened a travel towards Prussian soil, when, as the
moment of departure approached, a large hole was accidentally made in
the fabric by the end of the metal pipe, and it was then too late to
effect repairs. The next and following days the weather was foul, and
the departure was not effected till the 25th, when he sailed away over
the familiar but desolated country. He and his companions were fired at,
but only when they were well beyond range, and in less than two hours
the party reached Louvain, beyond Brussels, some 180 English miles in a
direct line from their starting point. This was the day after the "Ville
d'Orleans" balloon had made the record voyage and distance of all the
siege, falling in Norway, 600 miles north of Christiania, after a flight
of fifteen hours.

At the end of November, when over thirty escape voyages had been made,
two fatal disasters occurred. A sailor of the name of Prince ascended
alone on a moonless night, and at dawn, away on the north coast of
Scotland, some fishermen sighted a balloon in the sky dropping to the
westward in the ocean. The only subsequent trace of this balloon was a
bag of despatches picked up in the Channel. Curiously enough, two days
later almost the same story was repeated. Two aeronauts, this time in
charge of despatches and pigeons, were carried out to sea and never
traced.

Undeterred by these disasters, a notable escape was now attempted. An
important total eclipse of the sun was to occur in a track crossing
southern Spain and Algeria on December 22nd. An enthusiastic astronomer,
Janssen, was commissioned by the Academy of Sciences to attend and make
observations of this eclipse. But M. Janssen was in Paris, as were also
his instruments, and the eclipse track lay nearly a thousand miles away.
The one and only possible mode of fulfilling his commission was to try
the off-chance afforded by balloon, and this chance he resorted to only
twenty days before the eclipse was due.

Taking with him the essential parts of a reflecting telescope, and an
active young sailor as assistant, he left Paris at 6 a.m. and rose at
once to 3,600 feet, dipping again somewhat at sunrise (owing, as he
supposed, to loss of heat through radiation), but subsequently ascending
again rapidly under the increased altitude of the sun till his balloon
attained its highest level of 7,200 feet. From this elevation, shortly
after 11 a.m., he sig