t, and they were dropping
upon it like a stone. Every weighty article had been dismissed, except
the nine sand-bags, which had been designedly reserved to break the
shock on arriving at the surface. They observed that they were directly
over some vine-grounds near Lagny, in the department of the Seine and
Marne, and could distinctly see a number of laborers engaged in their
ordinary toil, who regarded with unmeasured astonishment the enormous
object about to drop upon them. It was only when they arrived at a few
hundred feet from the surface that the nine bags of sand were dropped by
M. Barral, and by this man[oe]uvre the lives of the voyagers were
probably saved. The balloon reached the ground, and the car struck among
the vines. Happily the wind was gentle; but gentle as it was it was
sufficient, acting upon the enormous surface of the balloon, to drag the
car along the ground, as if it were drawn by fiery and ungovernable
horses. Now arrived a moment of difficulty and danger, which also had
been foreseen and provided for by M. Barral. If either of the voyagers
had singly leaped from the car, the balloon, lightened of so much
weight, would dart up again into the air. Neither voyager would consent,
then, to purchase his own safety at the risk of the other. M. Barral,
therefore, threw his body half down from the car, laying hold of the
vine-stakes, as he was dragged along, and directing M. Bixio to hold
fast to his feet. In this way the two voyagers, by their united bodies,
formed a sort of anchor, the arms of M. Barral playing the part of the
fluke, and the body of M. Bixio that of the cable.

In this way M. Barral was dragged over a portion of the vineyard
rapidly, without any other injury than a scratch or contusion of the
face, produced by one of the vine-stakes.

The laborers just referred to meanwhile collected, and pursued the
balloon, and finally succeeded in securing it, and in liberating the
voyagers, whom they afterward thanked for the bottles of excellent wine
which, as they supposed, had fallen from the heavens, and which,
wonderful to relate, had not been broken from the fall, although, as has
been stated, they had been discharged above the clouds. The astonishment
and perplexity of the rustics can be imagined on seeing these bottles
drop in the vineyard.

This fact also shows how perpendicularly the balloon must have dropped,
since the bottles dismissed from such a height, fell in the same field
where,