The Trip of The Horla - Guy de Maupassant

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.

The two discoveries of Captain Jovis, the varnish principally, are of
inestimable value in the art of ballooning.

The crowd has begun to talk, and some men, who appear to be specialists,
affirm with authority that we shall come down before reaching the
fortifications. Several other things have been criticized in this novel
type of balloon with which we are about to experiment with so much
pleasure and success.

It is growing slowly but surely. Some small holes and scratches made in
transit have been discovered, and we cover them and plug them with a
little piece of paper applied on the cloth while wet. This method of
repairing alarms and mystifies the public.

While Captain Jovis and his assistants are busy with the last details,
the travellers go to dine in the canteen of the gas-works, according to
the established custom.

When we come out again the balloon is swaying, enormous and transparent,
a prodigious golden fruit, a fantastic pear which is still ripening,
covered by the last rays of the setting sun. Now the basket is attached,
the barometers are brought, the siren, which we will blow to our hearts'
content, is also brought, also the two trumpets, the eatables, the
overcoats and raincoats, all the small articles that can go with the men
in that flying basket.

As the wind pushes the balloon against the gasometers, it is necessary to
steady it now and then, to avoid an accident at the start.

Captain Jovis is now ready and calls all the passengers.

Lieutenant Mallet jumps aboard, climbing first on the aerial net between
the basket and the balloon, from which he will watch during the night the
movements of Le Horla across the skies, as the officer on watch, standing
on starboard, watches the course of a ship.

M. Etierine Beer gets in after him, then comes M. Paul Bessand, then M.
Patrice Eyries and I get in last.

But the basket is too heavy for the balloon, considering the long trip to
be taken, and M. Eyries has to get out, not without great regret.

M. Joliet, standing erect on the edge of the basket, begs the ladies, in
very gallant terms, to stand aside a little, for he is afraid he might
throw sand on their hats in rising. Then he commands:

"Let it loose," and, cutting with one stroke of his knife the ropes that
hold the balloon to the ground, he gives Le Horla its liberty.

In one second we fly skyward. Nothing can be heard; we float, we rise, we
fly, we glide. Our friends shout with glee and applaud, but we hardly
hear them, we hardly see them. We are already so far, so high! What? Are
we really leaving these people down there? Is it possible? Paris spreads
out beneath us, a dark bluish patch, cut by its streets, from which rise,
here and there, domes, towers, steeples, then around it the plain, the
country, traversed by long roads, thin and white, amidst green fields of
a tender or dark green, and woods almost black.

The Seine appears like a coiled snake, asleep, of which we see neither
head nor tail; it crosses Paris, and the entire field resembles an
immense basin of prairies and forests dotted here and there by mountains,
hardly visible in the horizon.

The sun, which we could no longer see down below, now reappears as though
it were about to rise again, and our balloon seems to be lighted; it must
appear like a star to the people who are looking up. M. Mallet every few
seconds throws a cigarette paper into-space and says quietly: "We are
rising, always rising," while Captain Jovis, radiant with joy, rubs his
hands together and repeats: "Eh? this varnish? Isn't it good?"

In fact, we can see whether we are rising or sinking only by throwing a
cigarette paper out of the basket now and then. If this paper appears to
fall down like a stone, it means that the balloon is rising; if it
appears to shoot skyward the balloon is descending.

The two barometers mark about five hundred meters, and we gaze with
enthusiastic admiration at the earth we are leaving and to which we are
not attached in any way; it looks like a colored map, an immense plan of
the country. All its noises, however, rise to our ears very distinctly,
easily recognizable. We hear the sound of the wheels rolling in the
streets, the snap of a whip, the cries of drivers, the rolling and
whistling of trains and the laughter of small boys running after one
another. Every time we pass over a village the noise of children's voices
is heard above the rest and with the greatest distinctness. Some men are
calling us; the locomotives whistle; we answer with the siren, which
emits plaintive, fearfully shrill wails like the voice of a weird being
wandering through the world.

We perceive lights here and there, some isolated fire in the farms, and
lines of gas in the towns. We are going toward the northwest, after
roaming for some time over the little lake of Enghien. Now we see a
river; it is the Oise, and we begin to argue about the exact spot we are
passing. Is that town Creil or Pontoise--the one with so many
lights? But if we were over Pontoise we could see the junction of the
Seine and the Oise; and that enormous fire to the left, isn't it the
blast furnaces of Montataire? So then we are above Creil. The view is
superb; it is dark on the earth, but we are still in the light, and it is
now past ten o'clock. Now we begin to hear slight country noises, the
double cry of the quail in particular, then the mewing of cats and the
barking of dogs. Surely the dogs have scented the balloon; they have seen
it and have given the alarm. We can hear them barking all over the plain
and making the identical noise they make when baying at the moon. The
cows also seem to wake up in the barns, for we can hear them lowing; all
the beasts are scared and moved before the aerial monster that is
passing.

The delicious odors of the soil rise toward us, the smell of hay, of
flowers, of the moist, verdant earth, perfuming the air-a light air, in
fact, so light, so sweet, so delightful that I realize I never was so
fortunate as to breathe before. A profound sense of well-being, unknown
to me heretofore, pervades me, a well-being of body and spirit, composed
of supineness, of infinite rest, of forgetfulness, of indifference to
everything and of this novel sensation of traversing space without any of
the sensations that make motion unbearable, without noise, without shocks
and without fear.

At times we rise and then descend. Every few minutes Lieutenant Mallet,
suspended in his cobweb of netting, says to Captain Jovis: "We are
descending; throw down half a handful." And the captain, who is talking
and laughing with us, with a bag of ballast between his legs, takes a
handful of sand out of the bag and throws it overboard.

Nothing is more amusing, more delicate, more interesting than the
manoeuvring of a balloon. It is an enormous toy, free and docile, which
obeys with surprising sensitiveness, but it is also, and before all, the
slave of the wind, which we cannot control. A pinch of sand, half a sheet
of paper, one or two drops of water, the bones of a chicken which we had
just eaten, thrown overboard, makes it go up quickly.

A breath of cool, damp air rising from the river or the wood we are
traversing makes the balloon descend two hundred metres. It does not vary
when passing over fields of ripe grain, and it rises when it passes over
towns.

The earth sleeps now, or, rather, men sleep on the earth, for the beasts
awakened by the sight of our balloon announce our approach everywhere.
Now and then the rolling of a train or the whistling of a locomotive is
plainly distinguishable. We sound our siren as we pass over inhabited
places; and the peasants, terrified in their beds, must surely tremble
and ask themselves if the Angel Gabriel is not passing by.

A strong and continuous odor of gas can be plainly observed. We must have
encountered a current of warm air, and the balloon expands, losing its
invisible blood by the escape-valve, which is called the appendix, and
which closes of itself as soon as the expansion ceases.

We are rising. The earth no longer gives back the echo of our trumpets;
we have risen almost two thousand feet. It is not light enough for us to
consult the instruments; we only know that the rice paper falls from us
like dead butterflies, that we are rising, always rising. We can no
longer see the earth; a light mist separates us from it; and above our
head twinkles a world of stars.

A silvery light appears before us and makes the sky turn pale, and
suddenly, as if it were rising from unknown depths behind the horizon
below us rises the moon on the edge of a cloud. It seems to be coming
from below, while we are looking down upon it from a great height,
leaning on the edge of our basket like an audience on a balcony. Clear
and round, it emerges from the clouds and slowly rises in the sky.

The earth no longer seems to exist, it is buried in milky vapors that
resemble a sea. We are now alone in space with the moon, which looks like
another balloon travelling opposite us; and our balloon, which shines in
the air, appears like another, larger moon, a world wandering in the sky
amid the stars, through infinity. We no longer speak, think nor live; we
float along through space in delicious inertia. The air which is bearing
us up has made of us all beings which resemble itself, silent, joyous,
irresponsible beings, intoxicated by this stupendous flight, peculiarly
alert, although motionless. One is no longer conscious of one's flesh or
one's bones; one's heart seems to have ceased beating; we have become
something indescribable, birds who do not even have to flap their wings.

All memory has disappeared from our minds, all trouble from our thoughts;
we have no more regrets, plans nor hopes. We look, we feel, we wildly
enjoy this fantastic journey; nothing in the sky but the moon and
ourselves! We are a wandering, travelling world, like our sisters, the
planets; and this little world carries five men who have left the earth
and who have almost forgotten it. We can now see as plainly as in
daylight; we look at each other, surprised at this brightness, for we
have nothing to look at but ourselves and a few silvery clouds floating
below us. The barometers mark twelve hundred metres, then thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen hundred; and the little rice papers still fall about
us.

Captain Jovis claims that the moon has often made balloons act thus, and
that the upward journey will continue.

We are now at two thousand metres; we go up to two thousand three hundred
and fifty; then the balloon stops: We blow the siren and are surprised
that no one answers us from the stars.

We are now going down rapidly. M. Mallet keeps crying: "Throw out more
ballast! throw out more ballast!" And the sand and stones that we throw
over come back into our faces, as if they were going up, thrown from
below toward the stars, so rapid is our descent.

Here is the earth! Where are we? It is now past midnight, and we are
crossing a broad, dry, well-cultivated country, with many roads and well
populated.

To the right is a large city and farther away to the left is another. But
suddenly from the earth appears a bright fairy light; it disappears,
reappears and once more disappears. Jovis, intoxicated by space,
exclaims: "Look, look at this phenomenon of the moon in the water. One
can see nothing more beautiful at night!"

Nothing indeed can give one an idea of the wonderful brightness of these
spots of light which are not fire, which do not look like reflections,
which appear quickly here or there and immediately go out again. These
shining lights appear on the winding rivers at every turn, but one hardly
has time to see them as the balloon passes as quickly as the wind.

We are now quite near the earth, and Beer exclaims:--"Look at that!
What is that running over there in the fields? Isn't it a dog?" Indeed,
something is running along the ground with great speed, and this
something seems to jump over ditches, roads, trees with such ease that we
could not understand what it might be. The captain laughed: "It is the
shadow of our balloon. It will grow as we descend."

I distinctly hear a great noise of foundries in the distance. And,
according to the polar star, which we have been observing all night, 'and
which I have so often watched and consulted from the bridge of my little
yacht on the Mediterranean, we are heading straight for Belgium.

Our siren and our two horns are continually calling. A few cries from
some truck driver or belated reveler answer us. We bellow: "Where are
we?" But the balloon is going so rapidly that the bewildered man has not
even time to answer us. The growing shadow of Le Horla, as large as a
child's ball, is fleeing before us over the fields, roads and woods. It
goes along steadily, preceding us by about a quarter of a mile; and now I
am leaning out of the basket, listening to the roaring of the wind in the
trees and across the harvest fields. I say to Captain Jovis: "How the
wind blows!"

He answers: "No, those are probably waterfalls." I insist, sure of my ear
that knows the sound of the wind, from hearing it so often whistle
through the rigging. Then Jovis nudges me; he fears to frighten his
happy, quiet passengers, for he knows full well that a storm is pursuing
us.

At last a man manages to understand us; he answers: "Nord!" We get the
same reply from another.

Suddenly the lights of a town, which seems to be of considerable size,
appear before us. Perhaps it is Lille. As we approach it, such a
wonderful flow of fire appears below us that I think myself transported
into some fairyland where precious stones are manufactured for giants.

It seems that it is a brick factory. Here are others, two, three. The
fusing material bubbles, sparkles, throws out blue, red, yellow, green
sparks, reflections from giant diamonds, rubies, emeralds, turquoises,
sapphires, topazes. And near by are great foundries roaring like
apocalyptic lions; high chimneys belch forth their clouds of smoke and
flame, and we can hear the noise of metal striking against metal.

"Where are we?"

The voice of some joker or of a crazy person answers: "In a balloon!"

"Where are we?"

"At Lille!"

We were not mistaken. We are already out of sight of the town, and we see
Roubaix to the right, then some well-cultivated, rectangular fields, of
different colors according to the crops, some yellow, some gray or brown.
But the clouds are gathering behind us, hiding the moon, whereas toward
the east the sky is growing lighter, becoming a clear blue tinged with
red. It is dawn. It grows rapidly, now showing us all the little details
of the earth, the trains, the brooks, the cows, the goats. And all this
passes beneath us with surprising speed. One hardly has time to notice
that other fields, other meadows, other houses have already disappeared.
Cocks are crowing, but the voice of ducks drowns everything. One might
think the world to be peopled, covered with them, they make so much
noise.

The early rising peasants are waving their arms and crying to us: "Let
yourselves drop!" But we go along steadily, neither rising nor falling,
leaning over the edge of the basket and watching the world fleeing under
our feet.

Jovis sights another city far off in the distance. It approaches;
everywhere are old church spires. They are delightful, seen thus from
above. Where are we? Is this Courtrai? Is it Ghent?

We are already very near it, and we see that it is surrounded by water
and crossed in every direction by canals. One might think it a Venice of
the north. Just as we are passing so near to a church tower that our long
guy-rope almost touches it, the chimes begin to ring three o'clock. The
sweet, clear sounds rise to us from this frail roof which we have almost
touched in our wandering course. It is a charming greeting, a friendly
welcome from Holland. We answer with our siren, whose raucous voice
echoes throughout the streets.

It was Bruges. But we have hardly lost sight of it when my neighbor,
Paul Bessand, asks me: "Don't you see something over there, to the right,
in front of us? It looks like a river."

And, indeed, far ahead of us stretches a bright highway, in the light of
the dawning day. Yes, it looks like a river, an immense river full of
islands.

"Get ready for the descent," cried the captain. He makes M. Mallet leave
his net and return to the basket; then we pack the barometers and
everything that could be injured by possible shocks. M. Bessand exclaims:
"Look at the masts over there to the left! We are at the sea!"

Fogs had hidden it from us until then. The sea was everywhere, to the
left and opposite us, while to our right the Scheldt, which had joined
the Moselle, extended as far as the sea, its mouths vaster than a lake.

It was necessary to descend within a minute or two. The rope to the
escape-valve, which had been religiously enclosed in a little white bag
and placed in sight of all so that no one would touch it, is unrolled,
and M. Mallet holds it in his hand while Captain Jovis looks for a
favorable landing.

Behind us the thunder was rumbling and not a single bird followed our mad
flight.

"Pull!" cried Jovis.

We were passing over a canal. The basket trembled and tipped over
slightly. The guy-rope touched the tall trees on both banks. But our
speed is so great that the long rope now trailing does not seem to slow
down, and we pass with frightful rapidity over a large farm, from which
the bewildered chickens, pigeons and ducks fly away, while the cows, cats
and dogs run, terrified, toward the house.

Just one-half bag of ballast is left. Jovis throws it overboard, and Le
Horla flies lightly across the roof.

The captain once more cries: "The escape-valve!"

M. Mallet reaches for the rope and hangs to it, and we drop like an
arrow. With a slash of a knife the cord which retains the anchor is cut,
and we drag this grapple behind us, through a field of beets. Here are
the trees.

"Take care! Hold fast! Look out for your heads!"

We pass over them. Then a strong shock shakes us. The anchor has taken
hold.

"Look out! Take a good hold! Raise yourselves by your wrists. We are
going to touch ground."

The basket does indeed strike the earth. Then it flies up again. Once
more it falls and bounds upward again, and at last it settles on the
ground, while the balloon struggles madly, like a wounded beast.

Peasants run toward us, but they do not dare approach. They were a long
time before they decided to come and deliver us, for one cannot set foot
on the ground until the bag is almost completely deflated.

Then, almost at the same time as the bewildered men, some of whom showed
their astonishment by jumping, with the wild gestures of savages, all the
cows that were grazing along the coast came toward us, surrounding our
balloon with a strange and comical circle of horns, big eyes and blowing
nostrils.

With the help of the accommodating and hospitable Belgian peasants, we
were able in a short time to pack up all our material and carry it to the
station at Heyst, where at twenty minutes past eight we took the train
for Paris.

The descent occurred at three-fifteen in the morning, preceding by only a
few seconds the torrent of rain and the blinding lightning of the storm
which had been chasing us before it.

Thanks to Captain Jovis, of whom I had heard much from my colleague, Paul
Ginisty--for both of them had fallen together and voluntarily into
the sea opposite Mentone--thanks to this brave man, we were able to
see, in a single night, from far up in the sky, the setting of the sun,
the rising of the moon and the dawn of day and to go from Paris to the
mouth of the Scheldt through the skies.

[This story appeared in "Figaro" on July 16, 1887, under the title:
"From Paris to Heyst."]

source: Project Gutenberg E-text